Just a Case of Flash Delirium
by nico78
Summary: One of these things is not like the other... A quick decision changes the fate of the gang before they cross back over. Last 3 chapters are up!
1. Chapter 1

_No infringement intended, no money made, the characters belong to Bad Robot. Here's hoping for a mind-bending season 3! _

_This is my alternate ending for the Fringe season finale, the way it would've gone had I been in charge... xD _

_Title comes from the MGMT album, _Congratulations_, which I've been listening to a lot lately._

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**Part 1**_  
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Peter couldn't believe he was standing here, again, with Walter, helping to set up some crazy looking instrument that looked like a prop straight out of Back to the Future. He hoped it was going to get them out of here as quick as possible. He and Olivia had not spoken much after stashing Charlie in a closet and driving here. He was still a little shocked. Shocked that Olivia and Walter had crossed over just to warn him. Shocked at the paper she showed him and said the Observer had given to her. He wanted more answers about the machine, about the DNA sequences in the drawing, and why him?

A thousand questions were running through his mind, he also wanted to ask William Bell about what he meant about him 'holding up well', but there was no time to ask any of them. Walter was plugging in cables and adjusting knobs and flipping switches. It was too much like the bridge incident, but he didn't have time to dwell on it. His mind was in overdrive and he was trying to help in any way he could, no more "network cable unplugged" this time around. Not like this thing had a screen or anything helpful that might tell them what was wrong if they couldn't get it to work. He could only assume this movie prop reject was the way to get back over, the key to opening the doorway. If it was this easy, why was the other side making bridges appear and disappear? Another question for later.

He was sure that someone or many someones were hot on their heels, he could feel them pressing down on him, like a tingling in his nerve endings, like he wasn't alone. He'd felt strange ever since he woke up here, but not in a bad way. Like he was in a new, freshly pressed suit. Or like he'd been given a new set of eyes to see with. The colors here were so different, he was at times entranced by them. They were saturated with reds and glowed with a quiet fire, so unlike the other side. And the light was beautiful, he caught himself more than once staring at the play of light on his hand or on the waves of the sea at his mother's house, trying to see if any of it was familiar to him. At times, he felt like he'd won the golden ticket to Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. And then Olivia showed up and burst his bubble. But he was still grateful to her. And reluctantly, to Walter. Deep down he had suspected it was all too good to be true.

The floor shook as a bomb went off outside and he turned his thoughts off. He suddenly became very worried about Olivia. And of course Bell, too. If they didn't make it back, what were they going to do? He would have to run, he was good at running. Him and Walter on the run. Would he bring Walter? Or would he leave him to fend for himself in a strange world?

He looked at Walter and their eyes met. Walter was contrite, worried, guilty. Somehow in the few minutes he'd seen him, he'd seemed more child-like, more fragile than he'd seen him in a long time. Peter was trying to keep his cool and not say anything, telling himself this wasn't the time for talking about heavy subjects, they needed to keep their focus. But he couldn't help himself. If these were their last few minutes in any universe, he needed to know something.

"What really happened to my mother?" he tried not to sound angry but it came out that way any way.

The question caught Walter a little off-guard. Of all the things he thought Peter would ask him about, his mother's death was not even in the top ten.

"She was killed in a car crash, you know that," Walter told him.

And Peter looked away. It wasn't the answer he wanted. Wasn't even in the same galaxy as the answer he was looking for. He wanted the truth and Walter was still pushing the same old story.

"Is she here?" Walter softly asked Peter.

"Yes," Peter said with a razor's edge to his voice.

Walter was shocked that in all the mayhem he had forgotten there was an alternate Elizabeth. And that he had met her all those years ago and lied to her. He had promised her something and then broken it. But she wasn't his Elizabeth and so it made it rather easier in a way. What would he say to alter-Elizabeth, given the opportunity to speak to her again? Should he apologize for his actions? Apologize for his alternate self's actions? That he hadn't wanted to disappoint her on the other side or make her any sadder than she already was, hadn't wanted to rip her son away from her twice which would've surely killed her? But he was happy that his son had gotten the chance to see her again. His real mother. And now he felt guilt at taking him away again.

"How was she, Peter?" Walter asked.

"She looked good. She was happy." It was all he could say about it. He was leaving her behind, the mother he'd lost twice and he might lose her again for a third time._ Focus, focus, focus! _

"Is this thing going to work?" he said to Walter a bit forcefully to change the subject.

Walter studied his son for a moment and the wheels in his head started turning again as he remembered they were in a very dire situation.

"We don't have enough power. Olivia had the others to get us through. I--I don't know if--"

"What others?" Peter interrupted, confused.

But Walter nattered on, there was no time to explain. "I don't know if she has enough strength to get us through. How do I even know if the batteries are charged on this? I didn't build this version." He was back on the knife edge of panic and losing his balance.

Olivia and William Bell came running in.

"Walter, they're here," Peter said to him.

Olivia stood beside him, no worse for the wear, but she was focused on the two men.

Walter Bishop and William Bell, two old friends separated by an entire universe and years of animosity, were sharing a moment and Peter was about to lose his patience and tell them to get on with it. Incredible, he thought and looked over at Olivia, that at a time like this of course his father wanted to get into an argument with Bell. He was actually a little surprised Olivia wasn't yelling Walter's name get him to stop and focus. She had that special gift to put Walter in his place. But her gaze was intent on the device and the two grumpy old men. He stared at her hair and her face, something was off about her, she moved differently, she felt different to him. Had something happened outside? He heard the exchange between Bell and Walter, but he couldn't shake the nagging feeling in his brain that something was wrong.

"I did it because you asked me to. Because of what you were becoming," Bell said.

The sounds of gunfire behind them prompted Bell to place his hands up and into the energy field. Streams of light began to pulse through his arms and Peter could feel it all around him, making the hair on his arms stand up. But he didn't break his gaze on Olivia, or the other Olivia if he was right. She reached over and grabbed his hand. She caught his eyes finally and smiled up at him. And with a jolt, he knew.

He felt the energy racing through him, the air shimmered and the sensation of being turned inside out was getting too familiar. But Peter acted quick, without reason, just knew that what he was doing was the right thing to do. It was beyond rational thought. There wasn't even time to think, it was all guts and no glory. He threw himself at the impostor who was attempting to sneak back with them. A wolf in wolf's clothing.

"Peter!" he heard Walter yell from far away..

He rushed into her as hard as he could, pushing them both backwards out of the pulsating ball of blue light and energy and onto the floor. The wind knocked out of both of them. The air crackled for a split second with electricity, there was a bright blue flash, and then there was silence.


	2. Chapter 2

.X.

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**Part 2**

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Peter had landed on top of the fake Olivia and a brief rat-tat-tat of gunfire erupted from the front of the auditorium. He looked up and around, hoping he had gotten himself as far away from the energy field as possible and that he wasn't a sitting duck from the goons storming in with their trigger-happy guns.

She started pushing and clawing at him to get off of her, rage flashing across her face. Fauxlivia crawled out from under him.

"Cease fire!" she yelled at the troops.

The soldiers halted their advance at the sound of her voice, guns pointed down, but ready.

Peter tried to get up, but his right foot erupted in agony. It felt like pins and needles were being jabbed into it from all sides from the ankle down. Olivia reached a hand down to Peter and he hesitated before grabbing it and pulling himself up. He managed to put some weight on the foot with only a little grimace. He didn't let go of her hand and pulled her close to him. His breath a whisper in her ear.

"I know who you are," he told her. And she looked at him coolly, calculating. He had no doubt in his mind.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she pulled herself away from him.

She was furious at him and barely hiding it. This was definitely not his Olivia. And that was not his Walter, also looking furious as he walked down the aisle of the theatre followed by another team of swat police at the ready.

"What did you do that for, Peter?" she asked him loudly, fire in her eyes as she put on a show. "We were about to go home!" It was Olivia's voice and her face, but it made his heart pang to know it wasn't her. They'd been so close.

If she was going to keep this little charade going, he was too. "I tripped, _sweetheart_," he told her, mirroring the fire in his eyes right back to her. She narrowed her eyes. From day one, Peter had irked Olivia with that little word and he was smugly satisfied to find out it worked on this version, too.

What's going on here?" Walter asked as he marched up to them, his trenchcoat billowing behind him, oblivious to the silent war raging.

Before Fauxlivia could even open her mouth, Peter spoke. "They threatened me. They took me hostage, Walter. I managed to escape," he glanced at her. She was harder to read than his Olivia, or maybe he just wasn't used to her. Would she rat herself out or keep up the act? All but the secretary knew the deceit was over.

"Monsters!" AlterWalter said to him in a disgusted tone. "At least you managed to escape, son," he smiled and glanced first at him and then at Olivia. Peter caught the look she gave Walter. Somethings in life were constants stretching across both worlds, he guessed, because even the Walter and Olivia of _this_ world were conspiring against him.

Broyles, in a military style beret and fatigues, came up to the group. "Sir, I have to recommend quarantining the area right away. You and your son will have to leave quickly," he said to Walter. Peter couldn't wrap his head around Broyles calling Walter 'Sir' even though it was happening right in front of him. "If we don't quarantine now, they could use the hole again to get through."

"What's a quarantine?" Peter asked. It didn't sound good. If he needed the hole again to get through, how was he going to find another one? This one was very convenient.

"It plugs the hole permanently so they can't exploit the weakness again. An unfortunate side effect is that it..._kills_… everyone within the area," Walter told him. "But it's all for the greater good."

"On our side, no one is quarantining anything, no one is getting killed. I've used a device that electrically seals the hole. My father-" it slipped out before he thought about it, "I mean-the _other_ Walter, built it. I was able to take it apart and study it. I believe I can make one for your side."

Walter looked angry for a moment. "_Our_ side," Walter corrected him.

Peter gave the Secretary a shaky smile, he hadn't realized he'd slipped up again. "You're right. _Our_ side." But it felt hollow even to his ears.

But Walter appeared intrigued. "Colonol Broyles, please afford my son whatever he needs to make this device. Set him up at the Fringe Division Lab," he stated proudly.

"Yes, sir, right away," Broyles looked at Peter and motioned at two soldiers. They stepped forward.

"Escort this man to Fringe Division HQ. This is Peter Bishop, the Secretary's son. Get him whatever he needs." They nodded.

Peter gingerly stepped forward but the pins and needles feeling in his foot had still not gotten better and he hobbled over to them.

"Son, are you alright?" Walter asked him, placing a hand on Peter's shoulder.

"I don't know. I might have sprained my ankle. It's nothing," he said trying to wave off the concern.

"Well, we can have them take you to a hospital and have it looked at. I know how advanced the other side is medically, but believe me son, we are far more advanced You'll be back on your feet good as new in ten minutes, even if it's broken."

That sounded too good to be true for Peter. Why be a martyr? He had a job to do and needed to be 100%. "Hospital it is, I guess," Peter agreed. The soldiers got on either side of him and he leaned on them as they made their way down the stairs and off the stage.

When they got outside, Peter got his first-hand look at the effects of the blast he'd heard earlier. His stomach dropped. There were dead bodies lying all around, burnt out husks of cars and flesh littered the street. What if Olivia was caught in the blast? What if her body was lying here and he'd just passed by it without even a glance? Was that how they made the switch? His mouth went dry and he leaned just a bit more heavily on the shoulder of one of the soldiers. He hoped he hadn't trapped himself on this side with a tyrant for a father and a doomsday device made for him only to find out Olivia was dead.

"Are you really Peter Bishop?" the soldier he had leaned a little heavily on asked in awe.

"Uh, yeah," Peter said. "Why?"

"You're only the most famous kidnapping case of all time," the one on his left spoke up.

"Really?" he turned to look at the other guy. He seemed sincere.

"Yeah. I remember it growing up, your face was all over the news channels. A man that looked like your father stole you right in front of your mother. They were both suspects, but the charges were dropped. Your father got involved in politics to find out the real reason behind your disappearance. I guess we just found out, huh Tom?" he looked at his colleague and laughed.

"Yeah. Another universe. Son of a bitch. What's it like over there?" Tom asked him.

"Almost the same," Peter answered. "But still very different."

"You got big bugs running around too? Damn, I'll never get over that," Tom shook his head. "That started about three years ago." They reached a vehicle and opened the doors. Peter got in the back of the armored truck. The soldiers got in front and started the car, driving away from the scene.

"Did someone set off a bomb out here?" he asked as casually as he could.

"Uh, well, it appears that way. We were called in about a minute after, so we didn't see what happened. Leveled everything, from what it looks like."

"Were there any survivors?" Peter asked. He hadn't seen any medical personnel or ambulances tending to the victims.

"Don't know. Like I said, we came in a little late," Tom said.

"Did they capture any of the people from the other side?"

"I don't know. Like I said—" he seemed a little annoyed.

"You came in late. So where was the Secretary?" Peter asked them. His father had showed up a little too quickly. Had they been tipped off?

"Hmm, well he was probably around the block in a staging area, don't want a big wig like that getting in the way. We weren't very far away either. We were lucky to be as far behind as we were, or we'd be smoked pork chops like the rest of them."

Peter stopped asking questions, he had enough answers for now. If Mr. Secretary was right around the corner, with Fauxlivia waiting, they could have caused the distraction and made the switch. The Secretary of Defense, his father, blew up his own troops to infiltrate their side and they almost succeeded. It was making him queasy. He had been so willing to follow this man, so eager...

And where was Olivia?

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.X.

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Olivia came back to awareness slowly. She was laying across the backseat of a car, hidden behind darkened windows. She tugged at her hands but they were bound tightly behind her. She twisted around and sat up, trying the door handles, but they were locked and there was bullet proof glass between her and the front seat. She leaned close to the glass and looked out the window. She saw movement down the block and she jumped. It was Peter!

He was being led between two heavily armed soldiers and he was looking at the wreckage all around him. It all came back to Olivia in a flash.

She screamed his name as loud as she could.

"_Peter!" _

He didn't hear her and she watched in vain as the soldiers opened the door and he jumped inside.

"Peter!" She yelled again, not as loud, trying to shake the car at the same time. But she watched the truck pull away and her heart sank. Peter hadn't made it back to the other side. He was still in danger. She was trapped and there was destruction all around her. She hadn't thrown any of the grenades Bell had given her, but _something_ had exploded. If it was any of Bell's, she'd probably be dead by now and not caught up in this nightmare. Did they capture Bell, too?

She hung her head and rested it on the door. They had been so close. So close to getting back. She wondered what went wrong. What would become of her and Peter and Walter. She couldn't believe this was happening. They had failed.


	3. Chapter 3

**Part 3**

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Peter swallowed back his shock. He had just taken his sock off and was staring at his foot in disbelief.

This was not simply a sprain. Not simply a broken bone. This was undoubtedly the strangest thing he had ever seen. His foot below the ankle was there, but... _not_ there at exactly the same time. Two independent states of being that should not coexist were attempting to coexist. His foot shimmered, phase shifted, the waves of light reflecting and refracting off of something that was simultaneously there and not there and it couldn't make up its mind one way or the other. Like a fluorescent light flickering on and off. He wiggled his toes and saw them moving, but he couldn't feel anything but the pins and needles, like an extreme case of his foot falling asleep. It must have been caught in the door when it closed. He should be thankful it didn't do a David Robert Jones and totally cut it off.

The doctor was puzzled. He reached out and pinched Peter's toes.

"Do you feel that?" he asked.

Peter shook his head. "No."

"Hmmm. Can you feel this?" he asked again, poking the underside of his foot with a sharp looking tool.

"No."

The doctor rummaged around in the bottom drawer of a cabinet and took out a black box with a wire running out of it. He switched it on. "How about this?" He touched the end of it to Peter's foot and he felt a stab of electricity and flinched involuntarily.

"Well, looks like you felt that," the doctor said.

"Have you ever seen this before?" Peter asked, not wanting to let worry creep into his voice, but he was plenty worried. This looked familiar, but he didn't know where he could have ever seen it before.

"No. But I've read about it," he said cryptically. He typed something into an electronic pad and then looked up at Peter with wide eyes. "If you'll excuse me, I'll be right back," he said as he walked out of the room.

Peter wasn't going to wait around and find out what that was all about. He tested out his foot and found he could walk on it if he ignored the sensations coming from it.

Three minutes later, when the doctor came back, his famous patient was gone.

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...

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Peter walked out of the hospital doors and limped into the back of the waiting swat vehicle with Tom and the other guy who he hadn't bothered to ask his name.

"Didn't they fix you up?" the unnamed driver asked.

"No, they couldn't do anything about it." He was going to have to live with the strange feeling in his foot for now. As long as it was down there and working, he would deal with it later.

Tom, in the passenger seat, swiveled around. "I think that's a first. I've never heard somebody say that coming out of a hospital."

Peter smirked, "On the other side, it would have taken eight hours just to get the paperwork done. Their hospitals are fairly medieval compared to your side. But I still don't like either of them. Let's go."

"Fringe Division headquarters it is," the driver announced.

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...

* * *

Peter sat in the Fringe Division lab, surrounded by strange and foreign looking equipment, trying to concentrate on making as wild a list of items as possible to buy himself some time to find Olivia. He was hoping she was somewhere here in the Fringe Division headquarters and once he gave over his list, he was about to go snooping around.

He made up a few more terms with wild sounding names and typed them into the pad they had given him to use. He looked over his list—the solid state quantum resistor and the transubstantiator coil, were his favorites--and was satisfied that it contained as large amount of gobbledygook as possible and it would have some poor assistant scratching their head for a few hours.

He hit 'send'.

The user interface on the computer was strange, but he got the hang of it right away. They had a network and he tried to access it to look for more information or a map of the building, but he didn't have the right credentials. He sighed and put down the tablet. He got up and tested his foot before heading to the door and exiting into the hallway. He would have to do this old school.

Peter was riding the elevator on the way down to the first floor to begin his search when Astrid Farnsworth, bedecked in a beret and military fatigues entered at the fifth floor. She stood with her hands clasped behind her back, staring straight ahead.

He cleared his throat and spoke. "Astrid?"

She looked him up and down with a cold military precision that was not Astrid at all. She stared at him for a moment and then a hint of recognition graced her face. "Bishop, Peter," she told him with a far away stare. She zeroed in on his face and then said, "You've been missing for twenty-five years, how do you know my name?"


	4. Chapter 4

Part 4

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THIS UNIVERSE

During Walter and Olivia's absence (and in Peter's absence, too, so this had been going on for quite some time actually), Astrid Farnsworth had needed something to do or she was going to worry herself to death. That something involved baking mounds and mounds of delicious, fattening pies- strawberry-rhubarb, pecan, blueberry crumble, sweet potato, and of course apple and cherry. Her mother's recipes always knocked people out and her and Walter had gotten into a (barely) friendly pie war a few months ago when she first made him one. It was only barely friendly because no one but Walter actually got to sample that first scrumptious pie she had made.

Astrid had slipped the pièce de résistance that she had slaved over for hours the night before into the lab fridge. This pie was going to blow Walter's pecan pie out of the water. But when she went to get it at lunchtime to share it with everyone, the plate was picked clean. Peter had apologized profusely, swearing he hadn't eaten it and barely holding in his laughter.

"For some reason, Astrid, out of the three possible suspects in this case—Olivia, Walter, or Gene-I would put all my money on Walter," he said to her, laughing.

And sure enough, the next day, Peter arrived at work with a sheepish-looking Walter behind him. He apologized to her for eating the pie and told her he had been sick to his stomach all night because of it.

So Walter baked another pie as a peace offering and even made some fresh whipped cream (courtesy of Gene), and it had been the unofficial Pilsbury Bake-off ever since.

Back in the present, this flash of memory saddened Astrid. It might now be one of the last good memories she had left of a happier time in her crazy little world.

She stabbed her fork at the uneaten slice of pie in front of her, shuffling around the apples and listening to Walter's tale about their failed adventure in the other universe. This wasn't how it was supposed to happen. They were supposed to come back. _All_ of them: Olivia, Walter, Peter. Nobody was supposed to have died and life was going to go back to their semi-crazed version of normal.

"And then I was standing there, alone. And Broyles was asking me what had happened. Very angrily, I might add," Walter finished.

"He just wanted to know what happened, Walter."

"I'll tell you what happened, Aster," Walter said as if he was stating an irrefutable fact. "Peter never wanted to come back. I should have known it was too easy. I should have known he couldn't forgive me so quickly. He still seemed very angry in the few minutes we had together." His chin was quivering, but he was holding it together, possibly still shocked at what had happened only hours before. "Peter and Olivia are going to live on the other side, happily ever after, and I won't be able to interfere in their lives any more."

Astrid couldn't believe what she was hearing. "Walter, that can't be the reason Peter did what he did. Are you sure you're remembering it correctly?"

"Yes! He would barely talk to me. What other reason would he have for doing something so foolish? After Olivia and I had gone to such lengths to explain to him what his staying on the other side might mean to both worlds. And to him. He was always a foolish boy. Too impulsive!" Walter's grief was now turning into anger.

"I just don't buy that explanation, Walter. There _had _to be another reason. Why would he bother coming back with Olivia if he didn't intend to come back at all? If they wanted to stay on the other side together- which I don't believe for one second- they could have simply drove off into the sunset and never looked back. Are you sure he _tackled_ Olivia? That doesn't seem like something Peter would do. Maybe he was pushed or he fell or..."

"Yes!" Walter exclaimed in his most authoritative voice. His eyes got wider and wider and he snapped his fingers. "Yes!" He stood up quickly and began pacing the floor. He was tapping his chin in deep thought, suddenly he seized her arm. "What if it _wasn't_ Peter at all! What if it was a shapeshifter? Or a clone!" he exclaimed loudly and began pacing again. "The other side is much more advanced than we are in ways we might not even know. That could explain his bizarre behavior. That's not something Peter would do, because it _wasn't Peter_!" He made a couple of laps around the kitchen.

"Walter," Astrid tried to interrupt him, but he kept pacing and muttering out loud, grabbing at imaginary ideas floating in front of him like moths around a flame.

"What if the other side had perfected the cloning process?" his voice ratcheted up a notch and he did not hear Astrid calling his name again over the millions of possibilities shouting at him in his mind. "Hmm, but he was able to answer my questions about his mother..." he stopped because suddenly Astrid was in front of him, physically blocking him from moving any further. She grabbed his shoulders.

"Walter! Listen to me! _What if it wasn't Olivia!"_

_

* * *

_

...

* * *

THE OTHER UNIVERSE

"You've been missing for twenty-five years, _how do you know my name?_" alter-Astrid stared back at Peter.

This bizarro-alternate-version-of-Astrid's gaze was making him nervous, something about her eyes and her mechanical way of speaking to him, almost made him regret saying her name out loud. And he couldn't tell if she was merely curious or might be ready to call in a battalion of agents to take him into custody. Her name had come out before he'd even thought about it. His brain and his mouth were not the usual well-oiled machine on this side of Earth.

"It's... complicated," he answered her finally. Maybe she would give up this line of questioning if he was deliberately obtuse.

She faced forward, but continued talking. "I have been debriefed on your status, Mr. Bishop. I know that you have been living in a parallel realty since your abduction as a child."

"Wow, okay, I guess _everybody_ knows that story except me." He almost laughed, literally _everybody_ knew the story of his abduction except him and maybe a village of alternate Amazonian indigenous people deep in the rainforest. He was like a celebrity and couldn't get over it. "In the other universe where I grew up, I work with you—well, an alternate version of you, anyways- coincidentally, in Fringe Division. So that's how I know your name. We work in a lab together. We occasionally trade colorful curse words in different languages when Walter-" Peter stopped himself. Despite his mixed-up feelings towards everything Walter-related these days (that included _both_ versions), he was beginning to look fondly back on the last two years. There had been so many more good times than bad and he secretly wished to return to those blissful days. "Nevermind," he finished on a sad note.

"Can you tell me about her?"

"Uh, sure. You and I have a mutual love of music. Especially Radiohead. They're a band. Does Radiohead exist on this side?" he asked.

She seemed to soften a little, but he couldn't tell because she still did not look at him. "Yes, Radiohead exists here, but they never made any more albums after The Bends. They broke up and went to form separate bands. Of which, I am a fan of all of them."

Peter smiled, the Astrid he knew was somewhere in there. They were fundamentally the same, just slightly different, like Walter had explained to him all those eons ago in what might have been another life. "I'd love to hear them," he said. "They made some great albums together after The Bends where I come from. I wish you could listen to them." And he really did mean it.

The doors opened and Peter stepped out into the dim, empty lobby area. But Astrid stayed behind in the elevator, holding open the door with her arm. He sensed the conversation was not over. "The odds of us knowing each other in two separate realities are astronomical, almost bordering on the impossible. Sometimes I-" But she stopped in mid-sentence and looked at him. "What else can you tell me... about me?"

"Where do I begin? She's— Um, you're- _She's_ an FBI Agent. She's very smart, studied linguistics and codebreaking. She's been very helpful, professionally and personally. She's also my friend. She's assigned to assist my- _mad scientist_ _colleague _in his laboratory where we investigate weird occurrences, just like Fringe Division here. Only on a much smaller scale."

"Is she a Looker, too?" she asked him.

He tucked his hands in his coat pockets. Peter couldn't help himself and laughed. "She _is_ very cute. So I guess, yeah, you could say she's a looker."

She cocked her head at his unusual response. "I don't believe we mean the same thing, Mr. Bishop. A Looker is someone with an ability to see into the future and predict all possible outcomes. That is what I do for the Fringe Division in this world."

"Oh. Then definitely not," he blushed slightly, embarrassed. "Although eerily enough, she _can_ sometimes finish our sentences for us."

She lowered her voice. "I believe I have seen her. In flashes. Would you tell her something from me?"

His mood darkened considerably. "You're assuming I'll ever see her or any of them again."

"I do not assume, Mr. Bishop, I believe you will. Please tell her not to leave Walter's side, he needs her. We will both be needed before this is all over. Just as we are all physically connected in both worlds, we are all mentally connected. And now you have to leave this place quickly. You will not find who you're looking for here." She removed her arm from blocking the elevator doors and they started to close.

"Wait, Astrid!" Peter grabbed the door and held it to keep it from closing. "What do you mean? Do you know where Olivia is?" He couldn't keep the frantic edge from his voice.

She lowered her voice, gazing downwards and not meeting his eyes. "I cannot tell you any more, Mr. Bishop. Both of our positions are now compromised. She isn't here and you need to leave." He still didn't take his hand off the door. And she looked up at him angrily. "Now!" she hissed and she looked so much like Astrid in that moment, it pained him to see her go.

Peter dropped his hand, letting the doors close between them.

He wanted to believe this Astrid was an ally, wanted to believe her when she said she saw the future. She had warned him to leave and he wasn't going to wait around and see if she was right or not. He patted the car keys in his coat pocket, thankful he'd grabbed them and his coat. He hadn't planned on leaving, but maybe he just knew.

He walked as quickly as he could, short of running, to the parking structure where his car was waiting. He didn't want to take the car, knew they could probably easily track him with it, but he had little choice. If Olivia was not here she was somewhere and he needed the wheels to look for her. Could she be held in a jail? In a hospital, maybe? He knew she wouldn't have gone down without a fight, if she was able to fight. The blast he and Walter heard outside was the only opportunity they had to pull the switch and there had only been a few minutes between it and Bell and Olivia showing up, at most. How come Bell hadn't noticed anything? Even though the man had sacrificed his life, how could they have switched Olivia right under his nose unless he was involved somehow?

William Bell: questionable allegiances right up until the end. It made him want to curse the man's name just like Walter was prone to do.

Peter looked around the empty garage, the key tag said level four, and he rounded the stairs. He was looking for a black Ford Journey. He had no idea what that would look like and hoped it would be easy to find.

His thoughts drifted to Olivia again. He didn't want to think about her being dead and he being all alone over here. He would know if Olivia was dead, wouldn't he? Astrid had said all their minds were connected, wouldn't he know if something that devastating had happened? He clung to the ray of hope Astrid had given him and he only wished she could have told him more. They belonged with each other and he wasn't going to stop looking until he found her.

* * *

...

* * *

Olivia, presently, hugged her knees, trying to keep warm even though the temperature in her cell was neither too warm nor too cold. Just like Goldilocks and the porridge.

"Juuuuuuust right," she said quietly to herself, her voice sounding foreign to her ears in the dark.

Goldilocks and the three bears reminded her of Ella and Olivia wondered what her and Rachel were doing at that moment. Maybe reading a story before going to sleep or going to school or cooking dinner. Her concept of time was totally skewed. But maybe time didn't exist in the same way on this side. Maybe she had only been gone a few hours when to her it felt like a day? She hugged her knees tighter, she should have said something to them. But how do you tell your family you're going on a suicide mission and don't expect to come back? You don't, you give them a prized possession and a big hug and silently hope you'll see them for dinner.

Olivia knew she still had a hard time letting the people around her care for her like she cared for them. Peter was always scolding her about it. But out of the ones she did let in, something always seemed to go horribly wrong. John Scott sprang immediately to mind. Now, Peter Bishop. She'd finally expressed to him what had been causing her many a sleepless night in his absence and look where she was now. They had kissed and it was even better than she imagined. It made her weak-kneed and breathless. And not one hour later, it was all ripped away. Their hopes of getting out of here and returning home the universe-conquering heroes, mission accomplished, world saved, were squashed.

Sleep was elusive, she would start to drift off, but something would pull her back and shake her awake. Probably because in the dark she had no idea what was awake or what was asleep, it was all blending together. She couldn't even calculate how long she'd been here. Time had no meaning. She only was tired or hungry or bored. She had gone through survival school in the Marines, had been sleep deprived and malnourished and beaten down until she had nothing left to give and had held her own with the big boys. Over there, on the other side, she knew who the enemy was, knew what horrors might await her while locked away in an enemy's prison cell. But this was not over there.

She rested her head on her knees and time dragged on.

* * *

...

* * *

Peter drove himself through the still not quite empty streets of early morning New York, back to the very nice apartment his father had set him up with in Manhatan. With one 't', he noted. The GPS was pre-programmed and instead of a screen, it showed directions directly on the windshield so he never had to take his eyes off the road. Fucking. Amazing.

His apartment was awesome. The comic book collection lining the wall was awesome (now he knew why he always thought there was a Red Lantern instead of a Green Lantern). The viral purging system was awesome, even though the simple fact they needed to have something like that made him shudder and reminded him not so fondly of the time he was locked in that office building, a virus desperately telling him he needed to get outside.

He didn't bother to turn the lights on, he could see fine by the collective glow of New York softly illuminating everything through the large picturesque windows. He pulled the photo of him and his parents out of the frame, folded it up and slipped it into his back pocket. He looked around at everything he could have had.

He could have gotten used to this life-style—the son of an important well-to-do political figure, the gadgets, the technological advances. It would have gone a little bit towards making up for what he'd had to put up with for most of his life. This could have been his all along if Walter had left well enough alone. No, that's not true, he reminded himself, he would have been dead had Walter not interfered. And he would be dead if he stayed.

Either way he looked at it, this life was clearly never in his cards.

But did he really think Walter was so heartless as to destroy the son he hadn't seen in twenty-five years?

Speaking of his father, he hadn't heard from him (or anyone) since the incident at the Opera House hours ago. He didn't know whether that was a good sign or a very bad sign. Fauxlivia knew he knew, but Fauxlivia did not immediately tell Walternate. And that bothered him. They could be conspiring against him right now, waiting to take him away somewhere and force him to use the machine. Good thing it was still sitting on the table ten feet away from him.

_Stupid!_ Why hadn't he taken it with him before? His brain obviously wasn't working at a hundred percent.

He moved towards it and heard a crunch. He looked down and saw the light glinting off shards of glass and it all came back to him-

_Charlie!_

They had stashed him in the bathroom after Olivia had knocked him senseless. Peter grabbed the neck of a bottle of whiskey off the cart and walked through the bedroom to the bathroom door. He got into a combat-ready stance and opened the door.

But the scene he witnessed when the lights came on was not what he was expecting.

In the quarter-second between Peter reaching in to turn on the light and slamming the door shut, he took in a great number of details about the scene in front of him. First, Peter noticed how clean and sparkly white the bathroom was compared to the gore fest on the floor. Secondly, Charlie was not there. Well, technically he _was_ there. Peter could only guess that the oozing puddle of bloody clothing and bone bits underneath the teeming nest of black, spider-like creatures, was Charlie Francis. Some of the spiders were the size of his fist, some a _lot_ bigger, and when the lights came on, their glistening bodies scuttled away from... _lunch... _and right towards him (_dinner?_). Peter would later swear that time had expanded in that moment as the lights came on and he took in all of these details at super-human speed. He also swore he saw the spiders turn their heads to look directly at him and he heard their pincers clicking in excitement as they moved lightning fast towards him.

Peter had to kick a rather big one out of the way with his bad foot before slamming the door shut and backing away. The contents of his stomach curdled, his skin crawled, his blood froze and his heart stopped. He hoped the seal on the door was good and tight and that they were too big to crawl out into the apartment. He now regretted not turning on the lights.

"Giant bugs. Why did it have to be giant bugs," he said out loud to himself, brushing at his hair. He slammed the bedroom door. His babysitters had mentioned them, but they were definitely not something Peter thought he needed to see up close and personal. And not crawling all over his bathroom floor. All over Charlie Francis' body.

Peter wasn't staying here a second longer than he had to. Still brushing imaginary spiders out of his hair and off the back of his neck, he grabbed the black case with the deadly power supply and exited the apartment. He stepped quickly, hoping he didn't have any stowaways in the folds of his clothes or in his shoes.

When he got outside, he stomped his feet and took a mental inventory. What if he'd been bit or stung or infected and didn't know it? He stomped around a bit more for good measure before sliding into the driver's seat of his car and locking the door.

His heart was pounding loudly in his chest and he tried to calm down.

Once they found Charlie, dead, on his bathroom floor, there was no telling what was going to happen. He had nowhere safe to go. No more good options, he could only hope that his father would not listen to Fauxlivia or, for some reason, she did not tell him the truth. He took a deep breath, he was so tired of being used as a pawn in other peoples' games. He just wanted to find Olivia. After all this, he was gaining a little bit of perspective on his life. After meeting the alternate versions of people he knew and seeing people encased in amber and a nest of giant man-eating spiders, he could deal with crazy Walter kidnapping him from an alter universe and saving his life. It was safe, it was normal, it was predictable. He just wanted to find Olivia and go home. Put his feet up, watch a little tv, drink a beer, fall asleep.

He started the car just as he felt the pressure of a cold hard object pressing into his temple.

Faux-livia's voice was honey dripping in his ear.

"I'm going to tell you where to drive and you will do as I say. Is that clear?"

He knew that tone of voice. Had heard it countless times before, but usually not directed at him. It gave him goosebumps. And he knew there was no other option but to comply unless you wanted a gaping hole in your head.

"Very clear," he replied. "Where to, _sweetheart_?" he tried to make it sound casual and lighthearted even though his heart was pumping a thousand gallons a minute.


	5. Chapter 5

_Hey, bet you all thought I forgot about this story? Well, I certainly haven't! In fact it has taken on a life of its own. Ending is finished, just gotta get there first!_

* * *

**Part 5**

* * *

THE OTHER UNIVERSE

In her hours of darkness, after the drugs had worn off (and then after her surprise visitor), Olivia had had plenty of time to think about her situation: a small cell, prisoner of a questionably sane Walter Bishop, Peter still on this side with the machine. She kept repeating these facts to herself as if she could understand why she was here and what had gone wrong and how she could fix it.

A small cell, prisoner of a questionably sane Walter Bishop, Peter still on this side with the machine.

Like Dorothy, maybe Olivia could wish herself home, too.

And then her mantra became-

"There's no place like home...there's no place like home..."

But she grew tired of that and started to think (again) about the desperation that Walter Bishop (both versions) had endured for the past twenty-five years. One's heart was loaded with despair and guilt while the other's heart was full of vengeance at the person who took his son. A person who looked just like him and made empty promises of curing Peter and returning him to his mother. Only never to be seen again. And the other one having to think about that every time he saw his son.

The Walter she knew as an adult was almost (she was ashamed to admit) a father-figure to her. A misunderstood man-child who was in desperate need of forgiveness from everyone around him and that desperation weighed him down. Olivia knew Walter and knew the depths of his desperation very well. This version of Walter, however, brought out a child-like fear in her that maybe she did not quite know what he was capable of. And she finally understood why little Olive had chosen to forget her days in Jacksonville and the man who had done so many bad things to her.

And then there was Peter...

Her friend. Her co-worker. Somebody so much more. Not even she knew exactly what she felt, only that she had such powerful feelings to protect him and care for him, because somebody needed to. This secret was too big for him alone. He needed an extra set of shoulders to help him hold up the weight of it all. And Olivia felt that was her job. And the absence of him was the only way she began to understand. Olivia had spent many a sleepless night in the last few weeks thinking about all of this (and taking a giant leap to becoming a full-blown alcoholic, but she thought she had every right to be considering everything...) and dreading the next day, whether it was to face Peter or to face him being gone.

And to find him, only to lose him once more.

Olivia hugged her knees close to her and laid her head on her arms. She was tired but didn't want to fall asleep. Didn't want to be caught unaware again by Walternate. Needed to put up a fight as long as she could, but the pull of sleep was almost too much.

When she first saw the crack of light in front of her, she thought it was her mind playing tricks. But it was definitely there and it grew bigger. The metal grate slid up, as if in slow motion. Olivia sat up, alert. If this was Walternate again, checking on her like his prize trophy at the fair, she didn't want him to see her weak like before. She'd let him see her beg and he would not see that side of her again. She steeled herself, back firmly to the wall, slipping on a mask of indifference, but the anger was like an avalanche set off in her blood vessels, going downhill and picking up steam and everything else with it. They had captured her, drugged her, and put her in this dark cell to rot. But they didn't know what she was capable of. Hell, SHE didn't know what she was capable of...

The light from the hallway blinded her eyes momentarily and she saw the outline of a figure. She felt something familiar but foreign taking over her body and the air around her became hot and suffocating. The atoms around Olivia started to vibrate so intensely that she thought she could see them spark and the air seemed to take on a life of its own. She broke into a sweat and tried to shelter herself in the corner, knowing instinctually what was going to come next and she had no control over it. She only hoped she wouldn't be consumed, too.

Bright blue flames briefly erupted around her and then coalesced into a red hot orange. The glass in front of her began to melt away and distort and she could barely see the face on the other side as the flames leaped through the open window. The figure didn't move away.

And that's when she saw, through the hot, wavering air that it was not Walternate, but Peter, standing before her, his clothes in flames and he was calling her name.

"Olivia?" she heard like a whisper in her ears over the roar and he staggered backwards in shock.

She couldn't even scream, the heat had taken the breath from her lungs.

Olivia woke up in a sweat. There was no fire or blue flames or melted glass or Peter before her, just the same wretched darkness of solitary confinement. The air wasn't even warm.

She buried her head in her arms, not wanting to dwell on what that dream might mean.

* * *

...

* * *

"You're turning onto a one-way street," Alternate-Olivia (that just didn't sound right, but what else was he gonna call her?) told him impatiently from the back seat.

"And you're going the wrong way."

"Aw, dammit," Peter cursed, looked all around his mirrors and braked too hard, sending Alt-Olivia roughly against the front seats. He was about to say he was sorry because that was the fourth or fifth time he'd done that to her, but she responded by jamming her gun even harder against his skull.

Peter's nerve-fried foot (which unfortunately happened to be his _driving_ foot) was the source of his bad driving skills and he wasn't used to the street signs or the car. And then of course Olivia Version 2.0 (that sounded right, even if a little inaccurate) was getting a little too much joy out of constantly jamming that gun into the side of his head.

"You told me to take the next right!" he told her, his anger showing as he whipped the car around and tried to lean as far away from the end of the barrel as he could. He didn't want to swerve too much and make her accidentally (...or purposely) shoot him in the head. It was like a complex Russian roulette tango and only he could fully appreciate it.

"Yeah, at the next street that _wasn't a one-way street_. Can I ask you a serious question, Peter?" she scrunched up her face at him. "Have you ever _driven_ a _car_ before?" The snarkiness in her voice had hints of Olivia in it, but was so NOT like Olivia that it made his stomach ache. If his Olivia had acted this way when they first met, if he'd seen this version of her... It might have saved him from a lifetime's worth of heartache crammed into two short weeks...

"You know, it's a little difficult to drive in a strange universe with strange traffic signs with a gun pointed at your head. I'm just sayin'," he looked at her in the rear view mirror. "Mario Andretti might even have some problems in this situation."

"Who?"

"A famous race car driver. _Nevermind,_" he replied. Peter stared straight ahead. If things between these two universes were so similar, how come they were so damn different? "Can you please tell me where we're going at least?"

"Why? Do you think you know a _short-cut_?" she scrunched up her nose when she said the last part. Only coming from this version of Olivia, it wasn't such a cute quirk.

And it only further reminded him how much he missed the real Olivia. And driving around town with _this one_ was a cruel joke that life continued to play on him.

So Peter blew out a frustrated breath and clamped his jaw shut. She was annoying him and he was losing his patience. Talking to this version of Olivia was almost like talking to a teenager who had a smart comment for everything you said. And you could never win, so you might as well shut up now and save yourself the trouble.

They drove the rest of the way in silence.

* * *

...

* * *

Peter parked down the street from a brownstone building Faux-livia had directed him to. She slipped out of the car like a cat.

"Grab the black case," she told him, pointing the gun at him.

He leaned over to grab it off the passenger seat and a thought flashed through his brain. This might be his last chance to get away before whatever she had in store for him came to pass. He'd dodged bullets before, no problem on that front. But could he smash a heavy case into Olivia's face and not have nightmares about it later?

"Don't even think about it," she told him jamming the gun into the back of his head. He froze mid-reach. "I will put a bullet in you faster than you can move."

"I'm sure you could," he said slowly and got out of the car. In fact he was 100% positive. It reminded him of the nickname he'd given her on his long drive to Washington- 'Gun 'em Dunham'- after she'd plugged one of Newton's security guards almost for no good reason other than the guy used his cell phone. And he had no reason to think this Olivia was any different. "But my father needs me alive, though," he said patting the case. "I'm the only person who knows how to work this thing." He smiled at her.

"I'm sure the Secretary would understand if there was an 'accident'. He was quite upset when our little charade didn't work according to plan. And so was I. I was kind of looking forward to seeing the other side of me."

"So you were just going to assume Olivia's identity? Live in her apartment, play Candy Land with her niece, file her paperwork and hope we wouldn't have noticed you weren't her within five minutes? I think you underestimate us."

"I think you underestimate _me_. Now, start walking, Bishop."

They walked up to the brownstone with Faux-livia openly pointing her gun at him. Even though it was extremely late, a person passed them on the street and paid utterly no attention to the woman holding a man at gunpoint. Even though it was New York, at the very least he expected the person to hustle to the other side of the street. Another reminder that this was a very different reality he currently occupied. They scaled the steps and Alter-Olivia scanned her hand and the door opened.

"Stairs. Second floor."

"Alright, alright. You could ask nicely, you know."

"Okay, how's this for nice. Move. _Now_," she told him with not a hint of niceness in her voice.

They reached her apartment and she tossed him the keys to open the door. When he opened it, the place was a wreck: books and papers and pillows and broken glass all over. It looked like a fight had broken out. Or maybe this version of Olivia didn't care much about a clean house.

"You should look into hiring a housekeeper. Your homemaking skills leave a lot to be desired."

"You think you're a pretty funny guy. _Your_ girlfriend did this. _She_ was the one assuming _MY_ identity first, so don't you forget about that. That's a federal offense."

Interesting... A fight between two Olivias... That was quite the mental image that sprang to his mind as he looked at the mess from another point of view. "She's a federal officer, too, don't YOU forget that," he parried back at her. And he just couldn't let it slide.

"So who won?" He tried not to let the smile show.

He was pretty sure his Olivia kicked this one's ass. After all, she'd been the one to find him and warn him about the machine. And kiss him. God, that had been a nice kiss, if only there hadn't been a million different things running around in his head, maybe he would have enjoyed it more. He should've put his arms around her and held onto her forever...

He snapped back to the present as this Olivia loudly shut the door and studied him for a moment, standing there in her living room with a smile on his face. She almost wished Frank were here, because her bringing another man home, at this time of night, might have made him a little angry and he had a wicked left hook. Wicked enough to wipe that smug smile off his face. But she had to stop herself. She probably shouldn't be taking out her anger at being bested by herself on the newly found son of the Secretary of Defense, but he seemed to enjoy making her angry. Almost as much as she did.

He noticed her staring at him. "So, did you bring me back here to your place to seduce me? Because lemme tell ya, none of this is turning me on."

"God, no. I have a boyfriend, thank you. And if he was around, he would be kicking your ass right about now and I wouldn't be stopping him." She waved the gun at the power supply in his left hand. "I want you to open the case."

He placed it on a table and clicked it open. "See? Just a bunch of wires."

"Then why did you bring it with you? You've got no clothes, no personal belongings, except that case. Must be kinda important."

"You mean my father didn't tell you what this is?" he asked with sarcasm dripping. "Wow, and I thought _I_ was out of the loop."

"Then why don't you bring me _into_ the loop," her patience was wearing thin.

"It's a fancy margarita machine. It's the only thing I take with me because I'm always ready to party. Maybe if we go get some tequila, we can fire it up..." he almost expected her to shoot him before he finished, but she didn't. But he saw how much she really wanted to.

"God, I don't know what she sees in you. You are such an annoying smart-ass," she scowled.

"Why thank you, I take that as a compliment, actually. My ability to get on peoples' nerves is the number two reason people like me."

She was not going to ask him what number one was. "I really should kill you right now and save _her_ the headache of putting up with you."

"She wouldn't be the only one you'd be saving from a headache," he said, becoming serious. "Speaking of Olivia, the _real_ _Olivia_," he emphasized a little dramatically, "would you mind telling me where she is? I just want to find her and get the hell out of this place. No offense, but your world is a real downer."

She shook her head at him. "I don't understand you, Peter. The people from that world _kidnapped_ you from your family and your life here and all you want to do is go back? They're monsters, just like the Secretary said."

She could tell from his face that she struck a chord.

"Olivia is not a monster," he said evenly. Olivia couldn't help but rub salt in his wounds, but it was just so much fun.

"You might as well just write her off, because now that the Secretary has her, you'll be lucky if you ever see her again." She couldn't help the tiny smile she gave him even though it was a low blow.

Peter blanched at her words, but clung to the ray of hope that Olivia was indeed alive somewhere. And his father had her and maybe he could talk him into releasing her-

"After our little fight earlier, I only wish I could be there when the Secretary breaks her."

Peter flinched again.

"Oh, wait, I will!" She smiled, savoring his reaction to her words. He was like a little puppet and she knew exactly which strings to cut.

Peter jammed his fists in his coat pockets and tried to pretend like her words weren't getting to him. In the adrenaline rush of the last day, hell he was on his fourth or fifth adrenaline rush by now, he had forgotten how close his emotions were to the surface. He'd almost broken down right in front of this Olivia only yesterday. But it felt like a lifetime ago.

And all he wanted to do at this moment was punch her lights out. But that would be rude (and wrong, being that she was a woman and she also looked just like Olivia). He also thought he might not win, either. The only person who could beat Olivia—was Olivia, as her living room was testament to. He looked down at the open case, anywhere but at her, and tried to get his swirling anger in check.

He narrowed his eyes. "You don't know anything about Olivia. And you don't know what she's capable of. She won't break," he said low and menacingly.

"We're the same person. I know _exactly_ what will make her break." _Just like I know what would make you break, _she thought to herself. She motioned again to the case. "Now, I want some answers. Tell me what's in there and why your father wants it back so badly? Oh, and I don't want you to think you weren't on his mind, he wanted you back, too. But compared to this hunk of wires, you were just an after-thought." She couldn't stop herself. Olivia saw how easily she got under his skin and she only wanted to cut at him a little deeper. Well, a lot deeper. She felt triumphant, like she'd just delivered the mortal wound to her fiercest enemy. She wasn't in Fringe Division because of her looks.

But it was almost too easy. She watched his jaw muscles clench and unclench.

"It's a power-supply," he said quietly, not looking at her. "I'm the only one who knows how to operate it." He waved a hand over it and some of the disks moved without him even touching them. He didn't know why he was telling her this. Maybe he hoped she would help him...

"A power supply for what?" she urged him to continue, her gun never wavering. He folded so easily. He really must be damaged goods, like she kind of thought he would be after all these years. Who knew what those monsters had done to him...

"A device my father has. It may help solve the problems of your world."

"But you don't want to help us solve the problems in our world, do you?" she said with a sneer.

"I do. I really do. But it's not that simple." Simple didn't exist in Peter's vocabulary any more.

"Sounds pretty simple to me: you operate this thing, you cure the blight, you get rid of the quarantines, you seal up the tears, and save a few million lives. Then you're not just a famous kidnapping case any more, you're the savior of the world. Sounds like a win-win situation."

He laughed, "It does sound that simple, doesn't it?" He looked up at her with such pained eyes. "But it will destroy the world I grew up in. The only world I've ever known-"

"But that world is _responsible_ for our world being like this, don't you forget." She couldn't believe what this guy was saying!

"I _can't_ forget," he spit out angrily. "I've tried. In the end, _I'm_ the reason that both worlds are like this. I wasn't the cause, but I'm the reason."

"_You're_ responsible for all of this?" the stirrings of sympathy she might have begun to feel for him folded in on themselves.

"Yes, but no. I can give you the cliffs notes version. Both worlds are very similar to each other. You know that there are doubles, slightly different versions of ourselves, you obviously met yours," he swept his hand around her living room. "My version on the other side died as a child and the alternate version of your secretary kidnapped me to replace him. He created the blight around Boston. He started the initial tears in the universes. I was raised by my father and my mother, but they _weren't_ my father and my mother. And I didn't know any of this until a couple of weeks ago."

"That all sounds insane," she said warily.

Peter laughed again, the laugh of a desperate crazy man, "I agree." She didn't even know the half of it...

"I help investigate the incidents on our side that I believe mirror yours, only they're not as extreme. And something happened a few weeks ago. The Secretary, my real father, found me and it all clicked into place. The man responsible for all of this is Walter Bishop, _on the other side_. HE was the one who couldn't leave well enough alone." He stopped to gain back a little composure. It was going to be an open wound for a long time.

"I was sick and he brought me over and cured me."

Peter stopped to think about that for a moment. He would be dead if not for Walter's reckless, tearing-a-whole-in-the-fabric-of-reality-without-thinking-about-the-consequences actions. He could be dead now anyways...

"But why did the Secretary wait twenty-five years to find me? And why does he have this miraculous machine that will help cure everything, but only _I _can power it? And I'm not talking about reading the manual and pushing the buttons. _I'm_ the energy source. And it may heal your world, but it will destroy me, too. That's why my friends came here. To tell me. So why didn't the Secretary tell me that?" He looked at her as if she might know the answer. But she suspected she wasn't the Olivia he wanted to answer it.

The raw emotions swirling around his face made her slightly regret the horrible things she said earlier.

"So, there are your answers. And if, after hearing the truth, you're still going to turn me over to him, let's just get it over with. But forgive me if I have a little trouble believing that the Walter Bishop on this side is on the up-and-up, because that man and the man who took me are both cut from the same cloth."


	6. Chapter 6

**Part 6**

* * *

THE OTHER UNIVERSE

"That's a great story, Peter, really. I wish I could help you out. But I have a job to do. I'm supposed to bring you back to your father and the two of you can work it out from there. But I'm sure he wouldn't want to destroy the son he hasn't seen in twenty years." She pulled out a mini-computer and tapped something into it.

"Not even to save his world? To get revenge? I'm just not so sure about anything any more," Peter sounded defeated to her ears.

"Save the dramatic monologues for your father. We need to get going. Grab the case, the helicopter leaves in twenty minutes."

She wasn't going to help him, wasn't even the least bit shocked at his story. So Peter finally decided on the proper name for her-

Evil Bitch.

* * *

...

* * *

Peter was silent for the fifteen minute drive to the heli-pad (in which he had to drive). And silent on the helicopter ride to Liberty Island. He barely gazed out the windows at the early morning sun hitting the Twin Towers and the bronze Statue of Liberty. He sat with the case open, connecting and disconnecting wires within it, scratching his beard (which had gotten seriously out of control over the last few hours), deep in thought. He wished he had some tools, because he was getting the inkling of an idea.

Olivia had been silent, too, but she had been thinking about what this man had told her. She felt bad for putting her duty first, but she had a job to protect the American people from these events. If the machine he possessed could heal the world, then one man's life couldn't possibly be worth more than the thousands, millions or billions of people it could save. She hated making decisions like that, but that's why she was a part of Fringe Division. Hard times called for hard choices.

When they landed, Peter snapped the case closed and numbly stepped out of the helicopter, lurching a little on his bad foot as the rotor blades whipped up a melee of dirt and debris, knocking him off balance. A chilly early morning mist hung all around the island. It captured his mood perfectly.

Alt-Olivia jumped out and joined him. They entered the DOD facility and she marched him down one sterile corridor after another.

Two men came for Olivia in her cell. When they opened the door they came at her quickly in the brief seconds that her eyes tried to adjust to the light, she tried to fend them off, but they injected her with something. It rushed through her veins like ice. No time for conjuring fire balls and melting her way out of here.

_Peter...! _

Her last thought echoed around her head before an even deeper blackness swallowed her up.

* * *

...

* * *

"_Peter...!"_

He snapped out of his funk as he heard her urgently say his name as they walked through the corridors.

He turned to look at her, wondering what she wanted now.

"What?" he asked her, impatiently.

"I didn't say anything."

"You just-" and he stopped himself. He looked around. He swore he heard her say his name...

They were near a corridor with an arrow pointing down it towards the restrooms. His chance. Maybe she had wanted him to take his chance now. Maybe she was close by. Once he got to the Secretary's office it was over. No more chances. He couldn't get to the Secretary's office.

"I, uh, need to use the little boy's room. Won't take more than a minute."

"Fine. It's right here," she pointed.

He opened the door and she followed him in.

"A little privacy, maybe?" he asked her.

She stood in the open doorway. "This is as much privacy as you get."

He bypassed the urinals and went to a stall, put the lid down and sat on it, quietly opening the case and studying the inner workings again. He really didn't need to as he'd memorized the connections. But he needed to check one thing. One thing...

"Hurry up," she called to him.

"Almost done," he answered, but he was stalling. In a stall. Oh, how ironic, he thought.

If he could find some extra wire somewhere... somewhere... if she wasn't standing right there, maybe he could cannibalize a light fixture or the hand dryer, but she was standing right there...

His minute ran out and he still hadn't flushed the toilet.

"Hurry up!" she called. "I don't have all day, Bishop."

"Sorry," he muttered. How long would she wait before coming to drag him out? If he knew Olivia, it wouldn't be very long...

He silently closed the case. And he waited. He heard the door close and her footsteps got closer.

"Get out of there, right now," she said from somewhere close by. He flushed the toilet and came strolling out of the stall, smiling.

But in a flash, he rushed forward, rushed her so hard against the tile wall, her body crashed into it and maybe, he hoped maybe, it was just the tiles cracking that he heard loudly as her head smashed into them, but she slumped down the wall. Unconscious. He was happy he didn't have to fight her more than necessary.

He felt for her pulse to make sure he hadn't killed her (not that he could do much if he did). Peter took her gun, took her badge, took her mini computer. Dragged her into the far stall and propped her up against the wall. Yeah, he was going to have nightmares about that, but he hoped he'd be far away by then. With the real Olivia in tow.

He locked the door from the inside and he hopped up on the sink counter. Pulled at the light fixture hanging above. He just needed some wires...

* * *

...

* * *

Olivia awakened with a jolt, immediately alert. She was strapped into a chair. A man sitting in front of her was placing a needle onto the tray next to him.

"Good morning, missy," he spoke to her. She narrowed her eyes at him. "Nice of you to join us, we're going to have a fun day!"

She looked around the room. He wheeled over a large machine with dials and gauges on the front of it and stood next to her. Another man entered.

"Is she ready?"

"Almost. Just have to put these on and then we're ready to go."

They started attaching electrodes to her skin in various places.

She squeezed her eyes shut...

* * *

...

* * *

Peter stood deep beneath the Department of Defense building, deep underneath the Statue of Liberty and jacked the jury-rigged wires of the interface into the main power-transformer. It was crude, he'd only had a few minutes to wire it up— and no solder, no tools, not even duct tape or gum or spit or anything. And he had no idea if it would work as planned, no idea if it was going to electrocute him in the process, but he was going to try it anyways. He hadn't much to lose at this point. Time was definitely running out. Someone would find Olivia tied up in the men's bathroom, they would notice his disappearance. The sooner he could get this working, the sooner he could free Olivia and get as far away from here as possible.

He wiped at the sheen of cold sweat layering his brow and tried to steady his shaking hands. _There are __no other options,_ he told himself. He was lucky to have this one. So he placed his hands into the interface. It clamped around his wrist and he started to feel the electricity thrumming into him and through his bones. He closed his eyes, but nothing else seemed to be happening.

Maybe he had to will it to work...

So he tried to imagine what he had imagined earlier on the helicopter ride out to Liberty Island- blowing out the electricity in the building, shutting the power down and rendering everything plugged into the grid, dead and useless. But still nothing happened. What was he forgetting?

He remembered Jones' light box and Olivia's activation. He never asked how she did it and right about now he kind of wished he had. Maybe she had just imagined the little bulbs winking out, one by one. Filaments breaking or circuits opening. He thought of Olivia and how she was somewhere inside this building, probably being interrogated or tortured (he swore he had heard her voice in the hallway and it sounded scared) all because of him and he was going to get her out no matter what. He was going home no matter what, he wasn't staying in this godforsaken world only to be manipulated by the people who supposedly loved him. A stab of pain hit him when he thought about his mom. She hadn't been manipulating him, had she? Maybe once he got Olivia free, he would find his mother and take her with them.

But first things first, he wasn't leaving without Olivia. He focused on that, his purpose, his goal. He imagined the circuits inside the building growing bright at first with a surge of electricity and then dimming, sputtering, sparking, dying. Imagined a power surge racing along the wires, into the circuits into the light bulbs into the computers into the power outlets into the coffee makers (scratch that) into the microwaves, into the refrigerators. Like an old cartoon where the water was like a bulge in the pipes, racing down and around, that's how he imagined it. An electrical aneurysm, bursting and causing widespread chaos.

A humming in his ears seemed to get stronger, louder. It made him feel good, made him feel alive. He thought it might be the best feeling ever...

He tried to make his thoughts even more vivid and the more he thought about the sights and sounds and smells, the more vivid they became. And the more the electricity cut through him. He didn't notice the lights around him blowing out loudly in a puff of acrid smoke and the room turning dark. The machine had him and wouldn't let go, it was feeding off of him. Just like he'd planned. But he hadn't exactly thought of an exit strategy. He was gone, now, too far gone to disconnect himself, the humming lulled him and made him feel alive. And even after the building ground to a halt, the generator tried to kick in. And he fried that, too.

His last thoughts before a wave of vertigo hit him was that he would fry New York, and the whole eastern seaboard too, if it would free Olivia and get them both out of here...

* * *

...

* * *

Olivia was in the interrogation room, her captors joking with each other and attaching a final electrode when the lights blew, plunging them into darkness.

"What the hell?" one of them asked.

"I don't know. Back-up generator should kick in any second, though."

There were no windows in the room they occupied and they sat in the darkness for what seemed like an eternity, but was more likely no more than a minute, waiting for the back-up generator to come on-line. But it never did.

"Shit. I'll go see what's going on," one of the men said and his chair scraped against the floor as he stood up. Olivia heard him fumble around kicking things and finally open the door. They might not be used to the darkness, but she was. She tried to wriggle free as silently as she could, working her wrists back and forth. There was some running outside in the hall and a few yells and she heard the other guy sigh deeply.

"Stay here, little missy," he said and his hot, stale breath was awfully close to her face. He fumbled his way out into the hallway.

A minute later, her wrists bloody and raw, Olivia slipped one arm out of the restraints and it was only a matter of seconds before she was completely free and ready for wherever this next battle was going to take her.

She groped around the desk and in the drawers for anything to use as a weapon and her fingers brushed over the cold metal of scissors. But she was hit with the strangest feeling of vertigo and she was knocked backwards off her feet and flat on her back. So hard she saw stars in the dark room dance before her eyes. There was a tingling feeling deep in her chest and in her brain. But she picked herself up off the floor, still unsteady, and grabbed the scissors.

She found the door easily and exited into an equally dark hallway. She heard faint yelling and saw flashes of lights down one end of the corridor so she chose the opposite direction.

With one hand on the wall to guide her and the other clutching her makeshift weapon, Olivia followed the corridor all the way to the end, checking doors as she went and finding them all locked. Her vision was useless, so her ears became attuned to every sound, every scrape, every intake of breath. The unknown lurked around every corner, behind every door. Someone could be standing three feet away from her and she would have no idea.

The hallway dead-ended and Olivia cursed her bad luck. She was back to where she started, following the opposite wall and checking doors. They were all locked tight, useless without the electricity to power them. She rounded a corner and began her inspection again. She just wanted out of here, just wanted some light to see. She felt, more than heard, a low rumbling and more far off yelling somewhere. She picked up her pace. This was her only way out, she had her chance at escape and she couldn't blow it.

Finally, after a few more dead-ends, she found a push-type door handle and it opened. It was echoey and she hoped that meant it was a stairwell. She crept forward and descended the steps as quickly and quietly as possible.

Just then, she heard a door open many flights above her and voices.

"Check down there," someone said from above. Olivia saw a flashlight slice through the darkness. Olivia opened the door as quietly as possible at the next landing, poked her head through (more darkness, this was getting ridiculous).

The heavy footsteps stopped above her as the door she was opening creaked and then they pounded down the stairs in double-time. She had no other option but to exit the stairwell and hide behind the door and hope it was enough to conceal her. She was so close to freedom, she couldn't lose it now. She clutched the pair of scissors, ready to strike.

The door next to her opened and she scooted far back in the corner. The person shined their flashlight down the hallway, sweeping it back and forth slowly. She was inches away from being found, the door the only thing keeping her hidden. She dared not move, dared not breathe.

She heard yelling in the stairwell and more boots pounding and the person shut the door.

She let out a breath slowly and quietly, her heart pounding loudly in her ears.

But the door beside her slammed open again with such force she let out a sound of surprise as it hit her. Two armed, uniformed men stormed in, guns and flashlights blazing and illuminating the hallway, sweeping them around and one spotted her.

He pointed his weapon and flashlight right at her.

"Freeze! Hands behind your head!" he shouted at her.

* * *

...

* * *

THIS UNIVERSE

Philip Broyles' cell phone rang. He picked it up off his desk and answered it.

"Broyles."

He waited as the caller on the other end tried to gain their composure and explain what kind of shitstorm had just happened in New York. Broyles' face went from a blank stare, to shock, and back to a hardened glare in the span of a few moments. He stood up and grabbed his coat.

"I'll be right there." He hung up the phone. He feared it was going to be a long, long night.

* * *

...

* * *

Olivia blinked, she clasped her hands behind her head as a New York City police officer patted her down and took her scissors. The other held the flashlight on her.

She blinked again from the bright light in her face and in confusion. Why was a federal building being raided by the New York City Police Department?

"Can you tell me what you're doing here? This is a restricted area!" he told her.

"I've been held captive here," Olivia informed them in as calm and clear a voice as she could muster.

One of the officers proceeded to handcuff Olivia. "What's your name?"

"Olivia Dunham. I'm a federal agent."

"Do you have any ID?"

"No, no I just told you, I've been held captive here. Can you tell me what's going on?" she asked, suddenly very confused. Why exactly was the NYPD storming in here?

He pushed her up a flight of stairs. "I'd like to know that myself," he added cryptically.

He marched her down a hallway, through a lobby, and out into a sea of red, white, and blue chaos.

The lights were so intense, so bright, Olivia had to shield her eyes. It was night-time, from what she could tell, but it could have been day because of all the police boats (was she on an island?) and helicopters shining their millions of watts of candlepower up into the air above her and all around her. The wind whipped her hair around and it was chilly in her thin clothes and she smelled the water close by. The cacophony of squawking radios, revving motors and sirens only seemed to get louder by the moment as more boats zoomed towards and around the area. She twisted around to see what the lights were pointed at and she stared up in shock. The bronze Statue of Liberty loomed over her. She'd had no idea she was on Liberty Island, she had been drugged at the opera house and woken up in a dark prison cell. She could have been on Jupiter for all she knew.

The spotlights illuminating Lady Liberty made it seem as if the statue herself were under arrest. Her bronze color confirming Olivia was still on the other side. Her stomach sank. For a second, she had hoped...

"Would somebody please tell me what is going on?" she asked again louder.

"Maybe _you_ can tell_ us _what's going on," replied the cop.

"I don't know either," she said.

"Then that makes two of us!"

The officer walked her over to a make-shift command area with almost a dozen people in handcuffs lined up. One of the men who had been placing electrodes on her what only seemed like minutes ago, was standing there, handcuffed, and glaring at her.

"Please state your name," said a female officer who approached holding a clipboard and radio.

She craned her head around, teeth chattering involuntarily in the cold. "Olivia Dunham. I'm a federal agent."

The officer snorted and pointed at the crowd of handcuffed prisoners. "Join the crowd."

* * *

...

* * *

Twenty minutes later, a helicopter landed.

Agent Philip Broyles stepped out.

A New York City Police Officer ran up to meet him. "Besides the obvious, what's the current situation?" he asked over the rotor blades and the barely controlled chaos all around him. He glanced up at the Statue of Liberty and shook his head. He hadn't exactly believed it when they told him the iconic green statue was now covered in bronze.

"Sir, we have nineteen people in custody, so far. One unknown subject being transported to New York General. Fourteen of them have informed us they are federal agents."

"Federal agents?" he said, surprised.

"We're cross-referencing the database now, but none of them are listed in any federal database except one. She also insists she was being held captive here."

"_She?" _he repeated. Somehow, Broyles knew the name that was about to spill from the agent's lips. "What's her name?"

"Olivia Dunham."

"Take me to her, _now_!" he almost shouted.

* * *

...

* * *

He was flying low across a vast lake. The sun reflecting off the water blinded him.

He dipped the tips of his white wings down into the water

He was going so fast. He was forgetting something. He looked behind him-

And then he was falling...

* * *

...

* * *

Olivia almost wanted to cry when she saw Broyles. But his presence only confused Olivia even further.

She saw him wave his badge at the female officer and exchange some words. And then he was led over to her.

"Sir?" she croaked as he walked up to her. Her relief, her confusion and the cold night air combined to make her voice barely above a whisper.

"Agent Dunham. What is going on here?" Broyles demanded. Her hair was brown and he wondered when she had found the time to dye it...

"Sir, is that you?" she said a little more forcefully.

"Who _else_ would it be?" he asked her, impatient.

"You have no idea. I can't tell you what's going on. I was being held captive here... and now... I don't know. I don't know what happened," she said.

Broyles had never seen her so shaken up.

"What universe is this?" she asked. She knew it was a strange question. She had lots of strange questions that she couldn't ask anyone without seeming like a raving lunatic. But she could ask Broyles and he wouldn't think her (too) crazy. She had never before been so happy to see him.

"This is _your_ universe, Agent. How and when did you get back?"

She swallowed back her joy, her relief, her jaw-dropping astonishment. Yes, this was the Broyles she knew, not an other side doppelganger intent on sending her back to her cell. She looked up at the Statue of Liberty, encased in bronze. It was from the other universe. She _was_ in the other universe. But something had happened to send not only her, but the whole Statue of Liberty hurtling back to their side. To say she was at a loss for words was the understatement of the millennium. "I—I have no idea what happened. This is the Statue of Liberty from the other side..." she trailed off gazing up at it.

"You're joking?" Broyles asked.

"No. No, I'm not. And-and I'd really appreciate someone taking these off of me now." She held her hands out from under the blanket draped across her shoulders. Broyles hadn't realized she was wearing handcuffs.

"Get these cuffs off of her, she _IS_ a federal agent," he demanded of the nearest officer. "She's MY federal agent. And find her a jacket!"


	7. Chapter 7

_So this is it! I finally finished the story! Woohoo! I'm posting the last 3 chapters in one go. I hope it was worth the wait because I have another story already started and this demanded to be finished before posting the next one. I'm sure you guys and gals (**are **there any guys on here?) like it when stories have endings, right? :P This might get kind of angsty, cuz i just love putting characters in danger and yanking them out at the last second...  
_

_As always, we scribes love feedback, good and bad, they're like crack only without the side effects!  
_

_Anyways, back to your regularly scheduled programming..._

* * *

**Part 7**

* * *

The zip ties were immediately snipped off Olivia's wrists and a blue NYPD jacket appeared a minute later. Olivia slipped it on relishing the warmth. It was three sizes too big for her and smelled a bit like cigarettes, but she didn't care. Broyles led her to the side, out of ear shot of everyone and they sat on a bench together.

"Are you okay?" he asked her sincerely.

She nodded, rubbing her wrists. She was pretty damn sure she wasn't okay, but she wasn't about to admit that right now. "Yeah."

Broyles wasn't convinced she was telling the whole truth, but they didn't have the luxury of time. He had a million other things he needed to deal with, like what exactly was he going to tell the media and if there was going to be retaliation from the other side. Dr. Bishop had eventually detailed the large-scale effects of the blight around Boston, but that only left him with ninety-nine hundred other questions that needed answers.

"Olivia, what happened here tonight?"

"Honestly? I don't know." She motioned upwards, "This statue... is from the other side. I saw it there earlier." She wasn't going to tell Broyles how unsure she was of what side she currently inhabited. How would she know? Could they all be actors playing parts only to capture her again? How could a whole statue, a whole _island_, have been exchanged? It was an impossible feat, wasn't it? It was one thing to send over a car or a building... The energy it would have taken, the effects of it all on this side and theirs... It was enough to leave her brain a little cracked, fried and scrambled. And a mental crack-up at this point in time was not advisable.

Broyles let a particularly loud helicopter fly over them before answering. "That's what I was afraid of."

"What?" she snapped around to look at him.

"The moment I saw it, I was afraid this statue was from the other side. Dr. Bishop came back two days ago. Alone. He told me as much as he could. He also said that as they opened the doorway to come back through, Peter pushed you away at the last second. Now why would he do something like that?"

So that's what had happened. She swept her hands over her weirdly colored bangs, already hating them because they were always getting in the way. Her alter-self must have tried to take her place after the confusion outside the opera house. Peter must have somehow known. And why did it not feel like two days had passed?

"That wasn't me. There are versions of us on the other side-"

"Dr. Bishop informed me of that, too."

"I met my version. I had to assume her identity in order to warn Peter. Something happened outside the opera house, I... I was knocked unconscious. When I woke up, I was being held prisoner. She must have tried to come back with them and infiltrate our side. And Peter must have realized it. Sir, what happened here?"

"Witnesses saw a bright flash of light, boats tossed around, power outages here and in the city. Not to mention the bronze-colored elephant in the room. Do you know what kind of a story I'm going to have to tell the papers? Because I don't." He sighed loudly.

She couldn't help but laugh at him, a short, hard laugh. "You're worried about what you're going to tell the newspapers? What you should be worried about is if an alternate Walter Bishop, an _evil, semi-sane_ Water Bishop, whose son was kidnapped twenty-five years ago, is running around loose!" She shook her head at him again and stood up. What in blazes were they doing sitting on a bench chatting as if the fucking Statue of Liberty hadn't just been plucked from an alternate universe by unknown forces!

"Walternate—the _other_ Walter Bishop- was the one holding me captive. He may be on this side, right now. Peter may be here, too. We need to turn this place upside down." She turned on her heels and began walking towards the building.

"Hold on a second, Dunham!" Broyles shouted after her, easily catching up. "You're saying an alternate version of Walter Bishop may be here?" _That's exactly what I don't need right now,_ he remarked to himself. This whole situation couldn't get much worse...

"Yes! You need to alert everyone here. Put out their descriptions, we need to do a systematic sweep of this building and the surrounding area."

"Agent Dunham... _Olivia,_ nobody's getting off this island without me knowing it. And there's enough manpower here to fight an army. You are in no condition to be conducting a search after what you've been through. The FBI, NYPD and every other government agency available is sweeping this island-"

"With all due respect, sir, do any of them _really_ know what they're dealing with? _Because_ _I do_," she said stubbornly.

"You have no weapon and you are too close. And I'm officially ordering you to stand down!"

"And I'm officially _declining_ to follow your orders," they were almost standing toe-to-toe when an FBI agent chose that inopportune moment to interrupt their little chat.

"Sir! I think you need to see something!"

"_What is it?_" both Broyles and Olivia turned together and shouted at the agent, startling him.

To his credit, he didn't flinch. "We've found something you should take a look at."

* * *

**...X...**

* * *

Olivia's apprehension was building as she walked through the dark corridors again, following Agent Harrison's lead back into the building she had only tried to escape minutes or hours earlier. On the way down into the depths of the old military building, Broyles radioed a description of Peter and Walter. If found, they were instructed to take them quietly into custody and notify him immediately.

They came upon a guard posted outside a room who nodded at Harrison. Harrison led them inside.

"What we've found here is beyond anything I've ever seen," he spoke gravely as he took his flashlight out and swept it around the room.

They took in all the details they could see with the meager light. Olivia noticed a framed drawing on the wall that matched the one the Observer left for her, but it appeared much older. She studied it for a moment, a sense of dread in her stomach. The light swept around and finally rested on the frighteningly large machine from the drawing. It was as huge and evil looking as Olivia thought it would be in real life. That sense of dread settled hard in the pit of her stomach.

"Can I see the flashlight?" She took the light and edged toward the machine, trying to see any other details. She was looking for something but she would only know what it was if, and when, she found it. She looked at Broyles. "This is the machine. This is what we crossed over to warn Peter about."

Broyles didn't look happy. Things had gone from bad to worse. "Do not touch this device," he commanded Harrison. "Do not power it on. Do not let anybody else into this room. I want as many agents as you can spare down here with weapons to guard it until we can get this place secure."

"Yes sir. I have a few agents on their way already."

"Good. When is the power going to get turned back on?" Broyles demanded.

"Uh, we're not sure, yet. The layout of the building is very different than the specs the city had on file. Con-Ed is sending over some technicians and equipment as we speak. It's going to take some time."

"Great," Broyles muttered. "Time is what we don't have."

"Do you mind telling me what you think is going on here, sir? I mean, this is more than a little unusual. And what are we going to tell the media, they're going to have a field day."

"That's for me to worry about right now. Your job is to keep this room secure. All of our lives potentially depend on it."

Olivia had been listening to their conversation with one ear as she continued to scan the room. There was a bank of consoles with schematics on them. The drawings matched the device she had seen in Peter's apartment. Three iterations of "wave syncs". She remembered what Peter told her, that it was a power supply given to him to 'take a look at' by his father. His newly found son only a few days home and he's ready to hook him up to some doomsday device. She wished on her mother's grave and Peter's grave that they would find Walternate because she was personally going to interrogate him and it wouldn't be pretty.

He would see the _real_ Agent Olivia Dunham, not the cowering, pleading, frightened girl she had appeared to him in that cell.

Broyles' radio beeped.

"Broyles."

"We have one of your unsubs in custody: male, approximately six foot, dark hair, late 20's/early 30s."

Olivia looked at Broyles, whose features were unreadable in the dim lights. But he was looking at her. She hurried over as he responded.

"What's the subject's location?" Broyles said into the radio.

"Electrical room. Second sub-basement. Con-Edison's in there now starting repairs. Subject is secured, paramedics have been called."

"Paramedics?" Olivia was now very concerned.

Broyles waved his hand to shut her up and spoke into the radio. "You boys didn't do anything to one of my agents, _did you?_"

"No sir, he was in pretty bad shape when we showed up."

"You need to take me there," she said urgently, her gaze swinging between Broyles and Harrison. She tried to disguise her fear and her need to see with her own eyes that Peter was okay behind an air of professional detachment. She was good at that. Had lots of practice over the years, but after the events of the last few days, she felt it starting to crack. "I need to speak to him. He's probably the only one who knows what happened here."

_Yeah, Olivia, that's the _only_ reason..._

Harrison stared back at her, waiting for Agent Broyles to weigh in on the matter. He really had no idea who this woman was, only that Broyles had allowed her to tag along after exchanging some heated words with her. But she walked and talked like a senior FBI agent and bossed around a big-wig like Broyles, so he could only speculate what the whole story was. And she looked like she'd been through the wringer and spit out the other side, maybe a little on the edge. Broyles was fighting with what he really wanted to say.

"Agent Harrison, please escort Agent Dunham wherever she needs to go. I'll coordinate things here."

"Thank you, sir," Olivia told him and immediately left the room.

Broyles leaned in close to Harrison and pulled on his arm, "And no matter what happens,_ don't let her out of your sight._"

* * *

**...X...**

* * *

After finding out how to get to the building's electrical room, they descended the stairs again and emerged into a hallway. Portable lights had been set up farther down and a slew of official-looking, uniformed people were entering and exiting. With her goal in sight, she sped up, but Harrison grabbed her shoulder and held her back.

"Hey, hold up. An NYPD jacket will only get you so far. Let me do the talking before they throw you to the floor and haul you away."

She was at his mercy and she hated to admit it. It seemed as though she was always at somebody's mercy lately, her control slipping away ever so slightly each time. She gathered the fractured pieces of her FBI facade and nodded to him. She had no ID, no gun, nothing to say she should be allowed to poke around this crime scene other than Broyles' word and now this agent's. She didn't need to be locked up for the third time today and so she let him lead the way.

Harrison walked up, showed his badge, spoke in low tones to the officer guarding the door, looked Olivia's way a couple of times, and finally they were allowed in. She saw the technicians, heard them arguing with each other about melted wires and blown transformers, tools banging noisily, instruments squawking and beeping.

And then she saw him- sitting upright on a stretcher, a paramedic trying to take his blood pressure- and it all faded away.

He looked horrible. His skin was pale in the harsh spot lights, but his cheeks were scarlet red. One wrist was handcuffed to the stretcher, but it was probably just for show. He didn't look like he was going anywhere. In a few strides, she was at his side, everything else forgotten for the moment.

"Peter?" It was almost a whisper. His eyes were closed and she had no idea if he could hear her and he made no movement.

"He's been out of it since I got here," the medic at his side told her.

She placed her hand on top of his handcuffed one and it radiated heat like a fire.

He heard the voice, it didn't blend in with the other voices and sounds he'd been trying to tune out for the last few minutes without any luck. And somebody was tugging on his arm, but he didn't really have the energy to see who it was. But that voice... only Olivia could say his name like that. Only she could contract his name down to one syllable. One syllable that told him he'd better open his eyes, better look at her, better listen to what she was saying or she might put a bullet in his brain solely on the basis that she felt like it. And the 'other one' never spoke his name like that, she was all sneers and teeth and perkiness. But he had to check, so he willed himself to open his eyes. His mind was sharp, but his body was dull and lifeless. So when his eyes finally complied with the orders sent from his brain, he saw her there looking worried and bedraggled.

The person before him had brown hair with bangs and he panicked slightly.

"'Livia?" Maybe it _was_ the other one, trying to gain his trust again...

"Yeah. It's me."

He needed a little more proof. And when he was able to get it out, his voice sounded thin to his own ears. "First time we met... where'd we meet?"

Of course he was suspicious, she thought. Who knew what kinds of lies he'd been told so far by people that looked like those he trusted.

"Iraq. Baghdad, Iraq."

He struggled to keep his eyes open, but this was enough to allay his fears. The other Olivia couldn't have known that. The other Olivia, had she been up and about, probably would have just punched him by now anyways. Especially after what he did to her. He felt slightly sick thinking about it. It hadn't been Olivia, but in his mind's eye, it was and he still couldn't get it out. Not even 10,000 volts could erase the sound of her skull cracking against the tile.

Olivia was looking into his eyes and then scanning him up and down. After what he'd been through, he thought maybe he might look a little charred. Crispy. Deep fried. Because that's kind of what he felt like. A deep-fried State Fair twinkie, crispy on the outside and hot molten goo on the inside.

"'Livia," he sounded relieved and gave her a tired smile.

She touched the side of his face, it too was red hot and he leaned into it for a second, closing his eyes.

"What happened?" she asked, afraid to know...

Her hand on his cheek felt so good, so cool and comforting and he wanted to fall asleep against it. But then she pulled it away a little too quickly.

"About to ask you the same thing..." He looked back at her.

She was trying to hide it, but she looked worried, stressed, panicky, even. And Olivia Dunham almost never looked this panicky as long as he'd known her. He wondered what she had been through since he saw her last outside the opera house. He wanted to know.

"Was trying to bust us out of here." A wave of nausea hit him but he swallowed a couple of times and it went away. His arms burned, his face burned, his whole body felt like it was burning up. "Guess it worked."

"Well whatever you did, it worked. We're back on our side."

He opened his eyes again and perked up.

"Really?"

"Yeah, really. What did you do?" She almost didn't want to know...

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure now."

"Hooked that thing up-" he tried to give a small nod in the direction of the techs who were busy scratching their heads around the main transformer. "-made a wish, did the hokey pokey... Don't really remember..." his voice was getting fainter the more he talked and he barely opened his eyes. Olivia looked over in that direction and spied the black box on the floor. The one he had shown her in his apartment. Damn him!

"Is that the device Walternate gave you?" She grit her teeth and didn't want to be mad, but she was. "Why would you risk yourself like that, Peter?"

"Modified it," he pleaded with his voice for her not to be mad. "Had to get you out. Had to get us both out of here. What else was I s'posed to do?" It took a lot out of him to get all that out. He didn't realize how exhausting talking could be.

She looked away from him. How _could_ she be mad at him, he had moved a small island across universes for her! But she WAS mad, because he could have died. Still could die from the looks of him. She would gladly have stayed on the other side with him if THAT was going to be the outcome of all this. Tears started pooling in her eyes, turning him into a dark blurry shape. She was scared for him and for herself and for whatever was going to happen next because she had no control over anything any more. In the span of a few short weeks and hours and minutes, her world had gone to hell just as Peter's world had gone to hell. And if he didn't make it... She couldn't even fathom it. They were in this together, fate had brought them together for whatever business it needed them for and he couldn't leave her alone now. He couldn't!

"'Liv..." he pleaded as the tears threatened to spill down her cheeks. This public display of emotion was so unlike her. She didn't realize how much he wanted to reach out to her right then, but he just didn't have it in him. And seeing her like this and knowing he was responsible for it all in so many ways, made her sadness even more crushing. Made everything that had happened so crushing. He had caused so much heartache for everyone around him and he just wanted to make it right. And to not be able to let the one person he cared for in all the universe- both universes!- know how much he was sorry for it all... He just needed to touch her, hold her hand, stroke her cheek and everything would be okay. He was sure of it. But he had no strength to even move a finger.

In Olivia's muddled state, she didn't realize the EMT was speaking to her.

"-got to get him to a hospital. He's running a high temp. He's fairly stable so we should go now," he said.

Olivia nodded her head, blinked away her emotions as much as she could. Even though Peter's eyes were barely open, she could see they never moved from hers.

"Are you riding along? We're taking him to University Hospital," the paramedic said to her. He had been a mute witness to the whole scene and he didn't need to ask if they knew each other.

"Yes," Olivia responded automatically, tucking her hair behind her ears. Broyles had things under control and he had basically told her to get out. And somebody really needed to ride along and make sure Peter was okay. Maybe she would listen to her boss for a change...

But would the doctors know how to help Peter? Sure, they knew what to do, they were trained professionals, but they wouldn't know the whole story: that he had 'hopped universes' and used a strange type of technology that might be killing him. She couldn't exactly tell them all that, they might admit HER for observation. And not knowing all the facts, could she trust them to make an accurate diagnosis? When she thought about it, there was only one place to go. And only one person who would know what to do. Her heart was telling her it was the right thing, if her brain was telling her not so much.

"Wait..." she touched the EMT's arm as she followed him out. "We have to take him to Boston."

"Boston?" He looked at her like she'd grown a third head.

"Yes, Boston."

"This ain't a taxi service, lady. We'll take him to University hospital, get him looked at, and you can arrange it all from there."


	8. Chapter 8

_This one kind of jumps around an itty bit and requires a little suspension of disbelief._

* * *

**Part 8**

**

* * *

**

There was no grand helicopter ride to Boston and a touchdown on the Harvard commons, just a boring drive. Olivia in the passenger seat of a Bureau SUV and Harrison, government-paid babysitter-extraordinaire, in the driver's seat following an ambulance as it exited out of the morning rush-hour traffic. Time had ceased to have meaning for Olivia sometime after the sun had risen about an hour ago. She was riding the crest of a coffee wave, trying to stall the inevitable crash.

She skipped around from radio station to radio station. They were all abuzz with what had transpired in the harbor the night before, but no official story had emerged yet and all the pundits were wildly speculating.

"I wonder what story Broyles is going to go with." Harrison seemed to be thinking along the same lines as her. She hadn't told him much about what had happened, just enough to keep him happy. But she could tell he knew it wasn't the complete story.

"Whatever it is, it had better be a good one."

The last bit of real news she heard was that they had found her "double" (as Broyles had referred to her alter-self) unconscious and taken to the very same hospital Peter was at. Before they left, Olivia had stolen away to the cafeteria for a few minutes and made a quick detour to peer in on her alter-self.

Olivia asked the nurses about her condition (telling them she was her twin sister) and they said it was touch and go but she was healing remarkably fast. Olivia declined the offer to go in and visit her 'sister', choosing to look in on her from the doorway. She nodded at the FBI agent stationed outside the door. It was almost too surreal for her brain to comprehend the image of herself sitting in a bed with all the tubes and machines hooked up. In fact, the last few days had been so surreal, she would have thought it was all a dream induced by Walter in the Opera House. But the real consequences of it all were surrounding her: Peter in a hospital bed a few floors away, a spitting image of herself a few feet in front of her, all of the tvs in every room she entered were tuned to the 24-hour news channels talking about the new addition to the New York Harbor and how it got there.

It worried Olivia that her alter-self was now on this side and it was a problem that would have to be dealt with very soon, but it was not her main worry at that moment.

She watched the back of the ambulance ahead and hoped that her quick decision to send Peter to Boston would prove to be the right one. The doctors wouldn't send him willy-nilly to Boston right away, she'd had to stick around while they waited the results of some blood-work and x-rays and tried to figure out what was wrong with his foot. She kept telling them he had a unique medical history and there was a doctor in Boston who was familiar with it. And then finally, after speaking with Walter (who was able to get a grip on himself long enough to placate the doctors) and after scratching their heads for a few hours about why he was in this condition, they were willing to transfer him out of their hair.

"Maybe you should get some sleep, Agent Dunham, we have almost two hours before we get there," she heard Harrison say after she closed her eyes and rested her head against the seat. How had Peter been able to power the device? She hadn't wanted to think about it, but the last few hours at the hospital and the massive amounts of caffeine keeping her awake had left her with nothing to do but think. What was it about Peter that made him special? Was it his illness? Was it the fact that he had lived in both universes? Had he been experimented on with Cortexiphan? And if he had, which side was doing the experimenting? Her mind boggled at all the questions she could think up to ask both Walters. And if she ever got her hands on Walternate...

Olivia finally drifted off to sleep.

* * *

**...X...**

* * *

Olivia opened the lab door and the ambulance techs wheeled in their charge. They looked hesitant as they took in the contents of the basement laboratory.

"It's okay, he's a doctor," Olivia said at their looks of apprehension.

"Dr. Frankenstein is more like it," one of them whispered to the other and they both laughed. She threw them a wicked glance, but was too tired to say anything more.

She barely said hello to Walter, who had sprung up from behind a desk and rushed over. Astrid jumped up from her desk and watched the proceedings from afar.

He looked up and down at the floor and ceiling and nudged the bed over a little bit. "Put him here," Walter said. And as an afterthought, "Please."

The bed was occupying the space in the lab that had previously held the metal sensory deprivation tank. Olivia noted with some curiosity that it was pushed over to the side and she wondered how he had managed that by himself.

They wheeled the gurney over and transferred an unconscious Peter to the lab's own bed and set up the IV bag. Walter grabbed the chart and stared at it and then at his son. It distressed him to see him here in this lab again, helpless and sick. Dying, likely, just like before, like when he was a boy, if his suspicions were correct (and Walter didn't always like being correct). After his conversation with the doctors in New York, he had begun to suspect something terrible and he just needed to perform some of his own tests before he could say for sure.

It was almost too much for him to deal with and he stared off into the distance. But he felt Olivia's hand on his shoulder, grounding him.

"Walter."

He snapped out of whatever thought he'd gotten momentarily lost in and flipped through the chart, looking over the readings, tsk-tsking at some and shaking his head at others.

"I'll need to do another blood work-up, but..." he stopped himself and stared off again.

"But what, Walter?" Olivia almost snapped at him, trying to bring him back again.

"But I may know what is happening," he said. "I just don't want to jump to conclusions. Astrid!" he shouted over his shoulder at Astrid whose head appeared from around the doors of a supply cabinet.

"Astrid, lets take some blood-"

"I'm already on it, Walter," she held up some medical supplies from the cabinet and dove in for some more.

"Good, good. She's on the ball more than I am, sometimes." His smile was strained.

"What do you mean you may know what's happening?" Olivia asked, unsure if that was good news or bad news from the way he said it.

"Let me do the bloodwork first, Olivia, and then I can tell you for sure."

* * *

**...X...**

* * *

**TWO AND A HALF DAYS LATER**

Peter slowly awoke. His sense of smell told him he wasn't in a hospital (and if he was, he was going to have to report it to the health department immediately). He heard the scratchy sounds of a guitar solo from the first side of the Violet Sedan Chair album, a comforting sound. It was all comforting in a way. And safe and familiar. The opposite of how he felt when he woke up on the other side in a strange house with strange machinery hooked up to him.

His eyes flickered open and from the row of darkened windows and the old bricks (and of course the smells and the sounds), he knew it could only mean he was at the lab. He groaned. It might _actually_ _be_ the worst hospital he'd ever been in...

He found he couldn't move hardly at all, the blanket over him was so heavy it might have been made of lead or steel. He felt so weak and he could barely manage to turn his head. But he did slightly and into his field of vision, jumped a half-smiling Walter, munching on something.

"Peter! You're awake! How are you feeling?"

"Hot," he barely managed a whisper. It was the truth, he felt like he was burning up from the inside, like a furnace on full-blast.

"That's to be expected." Walter said gravely, filling a hypodermic needle from a small bottle. "You're still feeling the effects of using your body as an electrical conduit. You depleted all your electrolytes to dangerous levels and your organs almost shut down." He squirted a little bit out of the end of the needle and frowned down at Peter. "You generated quite a lot of energy." Walter would have appended a 'son' to the end of that sentence, but he stopped himself.

"I did?" Peter was surprised to hear that.

"Do you remember anything?"

"No." His voice was back to a whisper and fading fast. He remembered some things, but mostly it all felt like a dream. Even this felt like a dream.

Walter injected the contents of the needle into the IV port. "Rest, Peter. You're going to need it."

He felt the delicious effects hit him and his eyes slid languorously shut. For a moment, he felt like he was in a warm sun-kissed meadow, a cool breeze blowing through the trees and over his hot skin as he laid down in the grass for a little nap.

Walter always did have the best drugs.

* * *

**...x...**

* * *

**THE NEXT MORNING**

Olivia stopped into the lab to check on Peter and Walter. She had been away in New York for two days, trying to do damage control, trying to analyze a small fraction of the millions of files that were stored at the facility, her attention divided as she fretted over Peter's condition. And Walter's condition.

She had called every few hours for an update.

They were still trying to get the main power up on Liberty Island, it had been damaged almost beyond repair. They had brought in generators to get the computers up and running, only to find the voltage was wrong after zapping half of them and the valuable data to smoking chunks of plastic and metal.

Peter looked the same as he did last night when she came by to check on him: sleeping somewhat peacefully, wires and tubes hooked up all around him. She noted with relief that his temperature was down from the night before. It was only a hundred and two degrees today.

Walter had dragged out an old army cot that was stashed away in a back room and was using that as his bed, but it was currently empty. She suspected the cot had been used many times back in the heady days of his and Bell's research here. There was a record playing and if she remembered correctly, the band was Cream. Walter appeared from a back room with a toothbrush in hand. He was starting to look rough around the edges.

"Agent Dunham!"

"Walter, you need to go home and get some real rest," she scolded him.

"Don't worry about me. Peter woke up last night a few hours after you left!" He did a happy dance, the rough edges melting away for a moment.

"He did? Did he say anything?" She was disappointed she hadn't been there.

"A few words, but he faded fast."

"What did he say?"

"That he didn't remember anything. And then I knocked him out. Well, I didn't 'knock' him out, I gave him a sedative."

"So how is he doing?"

"Much better after you came in last night. Slowly, but surely, he's recovering and that's to be expected. When he was a child it took him almost a week to recover. But those were very different circumstances... How was New York?"

"A nightmare."

It was almost beyond hope that they could bring some sense of order to the chaos that was raging there. The people of New York were not buying the story they were being told and all of the crackpots were literally marching in the streets. Not to mention her alter-self had miraculously recovered and escaped the guard at the hospital. She had been captured on the surveillance cameras, perfectly fine, sneaking out in the wee hours of the morning and that was the last she had been seen.

And all the while she'd been there poring over information and sophisticated computer systems, Olivia worried about what was going on here in the lab. Because she hadn't wanted to leave Peter after the chaos that had happened right before she was called back to New York...

* * *

**...X...**

* * *

**TWO AND A HALF DAYS EARLIER**

Walter threw the half-eaten bag of pretzels against the wall, but it didn't make as much of a dramatic display as he'd hoped for. So he grabbed an Erlenmeyer flask and chucked that at the wall. It made a resounding crash and shattered into a million glass shards. He felt immensely better but regretted wasting his pretzels in such a useless gesture.

"Walter!" Astrid shrieked at him from across the lab.

"Where are my files?" he yelled picking up a test tube and pondering whether he wanted to throw it, too, against the wall.

"Olivia's bringing them! You have to calm down, she'll be back soon!" Astrid was about ready to flee the lab, she'd had enough of his cursing and yelling. And now breaking things. She realized she was getting a rare glimpse of the old pre-St. Claire's Walter and was about to throw in the towel and leave. And if Peter hadn't been there, she would have.

Walter had gone through every box of files they had stored at the lab and what he was looking for was obviously not in there. And then he'd gone through every box he had at his house and it wasn't there either. So now, file folders were scattered everywhere, some had been thrown, some had been ripped to shreds in anger, loose papers littered the tables and floors. Walter kicked an empty box and it went flying. Astrid hoped Olivia was driving as fast as humanly possible from the Bishop's storage space across town.

Walter started his wind up to throw the tube against a far wall.

"This is not helping Peter!" Astrid yelled at him from across the room, planting herself not so subtly between Walter's rage and Peter, who was lying blissfully unaware of the carnage going on around him. Not that she thought he would harm Peter, but if Walter's anger got any more out of control, she didn't know _what_ might happen.

Walter looked back at Astrid and realized she was right. Getting angry wasn't going to solve this problem, he needed a clear-level head. So he put the glass tube back down on the table.

He was about to start salvaging the pretzels from among the pieces of glass on the floor when Olivia burst through the lab door with a box under each arm. "Astrid! Could you grab the other boxes from my car?"

"Gladly." Astrid fled the lab. She didn't need to be told twice.

Walter hurried over and pulled the boxes out of Olivia's hands, almost dumping them out on the floor.

"Walter! What is going on here?" she looked around the lab at the pretzels and glass shards and papers scattered everywhere. It was somehow worse than she'd left it only an hour before.

"We are running out of time, _that's what's going on here, Agent Dunham!_" he yelled at her and pulled a handful of files from the box.

She wasn't even going to help him, only he knew what he was looking for. She had attempted to go through one of the boxes earlier, only to have Walter go through it again. And again. And then have the contents end up on the floor in a disorganized pile. Sheets and sheets of dizzyingly complex equations, formulas scrawled on the backs of manila envelopes, recipes, photos, Peter's childhood drawings all scattered about. And somebody was going to have to clean it all up.

She stood over Peter's form, reading the monitors on the table next to him, not turning her back on Walter. The monitors told a grim tale in numbers and beeps. His temperature was still very high and he hadn't woken up. "Maybe we need to take him back to the hospital, Walter."

"No! I know what I need to do, I just need to _find it!_" His voice was an enraged shout and the look about him reminded Olivia of the look that Walternate had when she was being held in his make-shift prison.

He rifled through another box and moved onto the next one. "We cannot cure one without curing the other."

Olivia did not want to regret her decision to bring Peter here. She really didn't, because she feared Walter was Peter's only hope at this point, but she was starting to. Walter was whacked. Far more erratic and out of control than she'd ever seen him. She folded her arms across her chest and took a deep breath, keeping Walter in her sights as she looked back at Peter. And yawned She was running on a few hours of hastily caught sleep and gallons of coffee that was no longer working any more. She was bone-tired and was expected to be in New York the next morning. But she couldn't leave Peter here in this condition and not with Walter like this and it might push her past her breaking point.

Earlier that day, when Walter told Olivia what he suspected, that Peter's childhood illness had inexplicably come back, possibly accelerated or reversed by whatever he had done to get them both back here, she was slightly relieved, that maybe Walter knew how to fix him. But Walter couldn't remember the exact formula. But it was most assuredly written down somewhere, he had told her at the time.

Finding it was the problem.

He was like a squirrel; Walter had so many files scattered in so many different hiding places. He'd even mentioned a cache of files in the Jacksonville daycare that Olivia dreaded possibly having to return to. Without Peter at her side. She hoped it never came to that.

Astrid swooped through the door with more boxes and Olivia hoped the formula for Peter's childhood cure was somewhere in one of these boxes. Because if it wasn't...

But Walter spied a brown box in Astrid's arms and he rushed over to take it from her.

"Yes! I think this is it!" He opened it up and pulled out a file, reading it. Astrid and Olivia looked on anxiously.

"Yes! Yes, this is it!" He hurried over to Astrid and kissed her on the cheek. And then began to tell her what supplies they would need.

Olivia breathed a sigh of shaky relief and started to clean up the mess.

* * *

**...X...**

**

* * *

**

**EIGHT DAYS LATER**

When Peter woke up this time, it startled him to see Olivia standing right over him. She smiled. And he smiled back at her.

_A dream come true?_

"We've gotta stop meeting like this," she told him.

"Yeah." What did she mean by that?

Astrid came into his field of vision and he smiled at her, too.

"Astrid...?"

"Boy, am I glad to see you. I was getting worried." She placed a cool washcloth on his forehead and hurried off again. The washcloth felt wonderful on his warm skin.

"Why?" he asked. He honestly couldn't remember how he'd gotten here in the lab, flat on his back. The last thing he remembered was- what? It was all starting to come back in bits and pieces...

"You've been very sick," Olivia told him.

"Huh," was all he could say to that. It felt like he was still sick. Olivia was holding his hand and he squeezed it as hard as he could (which wasn't very hard) to let her know how glad he was that she was here. That somebody was here, that people still cared for him even though he was the source of all their troubles. He tried to swallow back his dry mouth and Astrid reappeared at that moment with some ice chips that felt like heaven sliding down his throat. He thought he had something important to tell her...

"How are you feeling?" asked Olivia.

"I don't know. Everything's fuzzy." The important thing he had to tell Astrid was lost again.

"You've been out of it for days. On Walter's _good_ drugs," she smiled down at him. "He finally figured out what was wrong, though."

"What was wrong?"

She hesitated before speaking. "Do you remember what happened in New York?"

"New York?" He felt so out of it, he had no idea what she was talking about, no idea why he was sick, why he felt like shit, why he was answering questions with questions, and why Astrid had been so worried. He did seem to remember something about being in New York, but... wasn't that all on the other side? _Wasn't it all a dream?_

"I don't exactly know how you did it, but you rescued us both and brought the Statue of Liberty and almost two dozen people over from the other side."

"I thought that was all a dream. I do vaguely remember talking to you about something like that."

"That was over a week ago."

"_A week?_ I've been out of it for a week?"

Olivia nodded. "You also managed to bring the other me over. She was in pretty bad shape. They took her to the hospital. But she somehow escaped."

He remembered THAT. Of all the things to remember... "I thought I killed her."

"What? Well, you didn't kill her. From the surveillance tapes from the hospital, she looked pretty alive to me."

Even though she had escaped, Peter was relieved because her death was not something he wanted to have on his conscience. "So what happened in New York again?"

"Where do I begin? Walter thinks that when you used that power supply you had- from the intelligence we gathered from the building you exchanged, we think it's called a wave sink- you were able to generate such a large amount of energy that you opened up a doorway between the two universes around Liberty Island. With that amount of energy, you were able to exchange everything in that area."

"And that's what made me sick?" That was a lot for his still fuzzy brain to process.

"We think so. You depleted all your electrolytes to dangerously low levels. And on top of that, somehow your childhood illness came back. Walter was able to replicate the cure again and so far it looks like it's working. But he's puzzled as to how that happened, the cure was a form of gene therapy and it would have had to be purposely reversed."

Peter squeezed his eyes shut, he just wanted to go back to sleep again, just trying to think about all of this was taking a lot out of him. Olivia must have noticed because she gripped his hand a little tighter. It was so much nicer when he could lump it all into a dream because then he could go back to the now wonderful sounding job of extracting pus from dead bodies, crawling in underground molebaby lairs, and inventing glass-reading electron microscopes. A simple life, really.

He thought about the room he had woken up in on the other side and the myriad of strange equipment he had disconnected himself from.

"My father had me hooked up to something intravenously when I woke up over there. I didn't know what it was. If the machine was symbiotic to my DNA. Maybe he had to reverse the cure for me to be able to use it." It was bad enough his father wanted to use him to destroy this world, but to make him sick again in order to do it? It was diabolical.

She squeezed his hand with both of hers. She hadn't suspected that at all. "I'm sorry, Peter. I know how much you wanted to be reunited with your real family and for everything to be made right again. But it was never going to happen. He was using you."

"Don't pull any punches, Dunham, tell me how you _really_ feel," he said sarcastically. "I know he was using me. What Walter does doesn't surprise me any more. I've seen many sides of him. And even though he's a little nutty and he kidnapped me as a child, I do think I like the version on this side better. But I got to see my mom. And you're here with me and you're safe. That's all that matters to me now."

He just wanted to go back to sleep and maybe it would all be nothing but a dream when he woke up for real. Maybe if he asked nicely he could get Olivia to sing _'Row, row, row your boat' _to him.

"Where's Walter?"

"Astrid took him home. He's been here almost constantly. So have I. As much as I could to help you get better."

"What do you mean?"

"It's the energy, Peter. Your energy. My energy. Intertwined on some cosmic level. I don't know, Walter explained it and it all made sense at the time." She didn't repeat the Tantric part that Walter had tried to vividly describe before she steered him back on track. "That's how you were able to power the device, how I'm able to cross over. It's all related to harnessing energy. He said you improved quicker when I was around, something about my energy. And he said you would know why."

"He did?" Peter didn't like where this was going. Maybe he could check out now and explain it away later.

Olivia got a look on her face that Peter could only describe as wounded. "He said it has to do with how you can calm people. Why didn't you ever mention it?"

He'd never wanted Olivia to find out, it was his secret. Maybe deep down he really didn't want to know why he could do it. Because then he'd have to ask the question of 'how' he was able to do it.

"Because... It just complicates things."

"You brought over a whole island, you brought me and twenty-two other people and a three-hundred-foot tall statue over from the other side. And Walter thinks that's how you did it, with this ability you have. _That_ complicates things."

"Please don't be mad, Olivia."

"How _can _I be mad? But it _would_ be nice to know the complete truth once in awhile, from you _and_ from Walter, so that I know exactly what I'm dealing with."

"I'm sorry. None of us have been fair to each other, have we? It's just always something I've been able to do."

"Do you use this... ability on _me_?"

"What? No! I mean, I can't control it, it just happens. It's gotten me into trouble in the past as much as its gotten me out of trouble," he said cryptically. "Let's just talk about it later." He closed his eyes, clearly not wanting to continue this line of questioning. He was exhausted and unable to completely defend himself any more.

"Your foot... Does it hurt?" he heard her say from far away.

He felt his mind beginning to drift away.

"No, just numb."


	9. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

* * *

Peter hobbled around his and Walter's house in his robe and sweatpants, only slightly leaning against the wall to keep himself steady. It was early, maybe 6:30, and he was desperately hungry. The first time in weeks. He'd lost twenty pounds and felt like he was going to blow away in a mild gust of wind.

He padded over to the fridge and opened it, grimacing when the only things he found in there were butterscotch pudding, cereal bars, mustard, peanut butter, jelly (but no bread in sight), a huge jar of olives and the remains of a twelve pack of beer he'd bought almost two months ago. He grabbed a cereal bar and went outside to sit on the steps to watch the sun rise. This was the longest he'd been up and walking around in almost two weeks and it felt good to be semi-normal again.

The dew was clinging to the grass blades and the first rays started to peek through the trees. He was content to sit there and observe the day waking up. And to feel himself waking up, too. From a long slumber. From a dream and a nightmare that never seemed to end.

He wasn't really involved in the ongoing investigation, he had given his statement (as much as he remembered), and let Olivia handle the rest while he recovered. There had been no retaliation from the other side. Not a peep. And that worried him a little. And no word about the whereabouts of Olivia's double. Now that worried him a lot.

He heard the door behind him snick open and close, but he didn't turn around. He knew who it was.

"Hey," Olivia said in her low, sleepy voice from above and behind him. She sat down next to him and rubbed her legs through her thin pajama bottoms.

"Hey," he said back to her, taking a slow bite from his cereal bar and looking at her sidelong. Her bangs were growing out, but not fast enough for her, as she told him every day.

"I thought I heard you get up."

"I didn't want to wake you."

"You didn't, I was already awake."

"Liar." He snaked his arm around her and pulled her close. She laid her head on his shoulder and put her arm around his waist, trying to soak up his warmth. He still ran a little hotter than normal after all this time. Walter said he might never get back to a normal 98.6. But what went for normal around here was not your 'normal' normal. And she was perfectly fine with this.

"How do you feel?" Olivia asked after a couple of minutes sitting there contentedly in each others' presence. She felt like she was in heaven.

"Good. Better. Starving, actually. And this is the only edible thing in the house." He held up the cereal bar and took the last bite.

"I know. I think somebody needs to go grocery shopping."

"I don't feel _that_ much better," he teased.

"Milk it for as long as you can, Bishop. I meant Walter and I. I never knew how much food that man went through in a week."

"He's a growing mad scientist. Speaking of food, I really could go for some french toast," he said. "And some bacon and eggs. And some extra crispy hash browns." He was especially tired of bland soup and toast and tea and being stuck in bed all day watching CNN incredulously as they continued to argue about what happened in New York. The main suspects were a film crew who tried to stage a takeover of the Statue of Liberty to film their guerrilla sci-fi movie. The thought of Broyles having to sell that story to the public made him laugh. Every time.

"Do you feel good enough to go get some breakfast? Maybe just you and I?" Olivia asked him, breaking him from his reverie.

It was the best thing she could have said to him, but he felt like teasing her. "Walter might worry."

"We'll bring him some pancakes to keep him quiet."

"Maybe we can make it there and back before he even wakes up," he quirked his eyebrows up and down at her and she laughed. And he loved the sound.

"Then it's settled, let's go." But neither of them moved. They each were just a little too comfortable to get up yet. Olivia was basking in the moment. She had really missed spending time with Peter, their private little talks that meant the world to her had been missing for months, their friendship strained and about to fall apart. And sometimes she felt it would never be repaired, let alone get to this point. This wonderful point where she could tell him just how she felt about him and he could tell her and they weren't afraid of each other any more. But they'd had to go through hell and back to get here. Maybe that's what made it so much sweeter.

And Peter was thankful to be alive and to be sitting here with this incredible woman who really cared for him, who went above and beyond the call of duty for him. Who kicked ass and took names and was somehow always saving his butt. And buying their groceries. He hugged her closer to him. He hadn't thought he felt good enough to make an excursion out into the real world today, but having her next to him and knowing she would be there the whole time, he felt he had it in him to at least give it a try.

"So what are we waiting for?" he asked.

"The french toast fairy to drop a picnic basket at our feet?"

He smiled. "Never say never."

She stood and smiled back, helping Peter up as she did. She didn't want to tire him out, he was still recuperating, but she felt a good breakfast would go a long way to helping him feel better. And she felt like a Jewish mother wanting to fatten him up some, he had gotten entirely too thin over the last few weeks.

They locked hands and went inside to get ready.

* * *

...X...

* * *

In the back of a dark typewriter shop somewhere in Boston, a woman with reddish brown hair sat down at an old Selectric and typed out the following:

SUBJECTS HAVE BEEN LOCATED. AWAITING FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS.

* * *

...

* * *

**The End**


End file.
